New online course evaluation may reap better results
The next time USU students sit down to fill out their teacher evaluations they won’t need a pencil.
Online course evaluations will occur near the end of the semester, around the same time the printed version would have been issued in classes. A link will be sent to all student email accounts prompting them to answer questions that are intended to help gauge the success of a course and its professor, said Michael Torrens, director of the Office of Analysis, Assessment and Accreditation. Reminders will be sent to the students frequently via email until their evaluations are complete.
“This new system is focused on learning objectives,” Torrens said. “What that means is in the syllabus students get a really important part of their course, which are the objectives you are trying to achieve in that class. The old system did not focus on that.”
USU’s Faculty Evaluations Committee of the Faculty Senate began investigating the effectiveness of the printed course evaluations that were dealt to each class near the end of each semester a few years ago, Torrens said. He said the system began an intensive review one and a half years ago exploring how other universities issued course evaluations. The IDEA Center recommended a pilot system that was tested with 40 courses, and ultimately the Faculty Senate approved of the change.
“We are delighted they are changing the system because the old system didn’t give us any useful knowledge,” history department chair Norm Jones said.
Torrens said he believes the new system will urge more relevant answers from students, though there are a few setbacks to worry about. Since students will no longer be instructed by their professors to fill out course evaluations in a classroom, they may not take the time to complete them. Jones said there is the possibility students will not understand how important the evaluations are to overall department improvements, and their academic futures.
“If you do evaluations in class you have a captive audience,” Jones said. “That’s going to be the big trick. We have talked about all sorts of incentives for students.”
Todd Hicken, a senior majoring in chemistry, said he doesn’t see himself wanting to take the time out of his schedule to complete the evaluations unless he had a really disappointing, or really impressive professor.
“I have organic chemistry, multivariable calculus, and quantitative chemical analysis, and those classes will eat up my free time,” Hicken said. He said with such a heavy load, time is precious.
Other higher education institutions do a number of things that lock students into completing their course evaluations, and, Torrens said, through research they have found options that may be successful at USU. However, nothing has been decided.
“Some institutions don’t let you see your grade until you do the evaluation,” Jones said. “This could be a problem as well though, because students might just check ‘C’ on everything and turn it in, so that may be a negative way to go about it.”
The idea of turning completion of evaluations into an assignment was also presented. Another idea presented was to create a reward system, where students receive a $5 gift certificate or voucher for their contribution, but, Jones said there isn’t money enough to do this.
“I don’t want it to be punitive,” Torrens said, “or (have) a thing where people are penalized for not doing it, but I think there should be some benefit to contributing these systems.”
Torrens said in universities where the students understand how much the evaluations matter in the big picture is where there are the most responses to course evaluations.
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu