End of course evaluations move to online format

Students and faculty were given the chance to ask questions and reveal concerns to a panel of campus administrators about the move to online course evaluations, a decision that was approved last April.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Sonya Stephens, a member of the panel, introduced the discussion, noting that the current system involving Scantron paper assessments had a number of disadvantages.

“We are looking closely at the current instrument and realizing that it is not as accurate as we would have liked and that it could be improved,” Stephens said. “This is also part of the response to the student view that we don’t use them for anything.”

Per the policy approved in April, all courses will require course evaluations. Each evaluation will include four “campus common questions.” Departments and schools can then add more questions as needed for their purposes.

Each questionnaire will also feature four “student access questions,” which students can then see the results of online.

A number of concerns were raised by both faculty and students.

How will associate instructors, or AIs, be evaluated?
The panel said it was difficult to come up with questions for all instructors across all departments, especially AIs, since some departments don’t rate their AIs. However, this new policy would require that they be rated.

Provost Lauren Robel said they wanted to be careful concerning data from AI evaluations.

“We did not want to harm AIs with public information about their first year of teaching while they are still getting on their feet,” Robel said.

Will there be undue attention placed on evaluations for faculty tenure and promotion?
The online course evaluations would make it easier to put the information into graphs. Some faculty members were concerned that these graphs would overpower other pieces in their dossiers used for promotion and tenure purposes.

“Graphs capture what other documents cannot,” Vice Provost Tom Gieryn said. “But I don’t see evidence that undue attention is paid to course evaluations.”

Students will be familiar with the first two questions present on every current evaluation: “I would rate the instructor of this course as: outstanding, etc.” and “I would rate this course as: outstanding, etc.”

The new questions proposed by the items subcommittee were changed so that they are more precise and easier for students to give more nuanced and exact answers, Gieryn said.

“Students had more problems with interpreting the original two questions, so we avoided them,” he said.

How will the new system require students to actually do the evaluations?
A student said all students have to take the paper evaluations because they are handed out in class. If the evaluations were online, instructors run the risk that students would not complete them.

The panel members said this is still being worked out and that they looked at the examples of other schools. Michigan State University, which uses an online evaluation system, allows students to see their grades two days earlier if they fill out their course evaluations. Other examples include allowing students to see the results from the student access questions only if they actually fill out the evaluations, or even tangible rewards, such as being entered in a drawing for an iPad.

“We have to create a culture of students who want to fill them out,” Ouimet said. “If a faculty member shows that they really care about it, students will do it.”
Mobile phone capabilities have also been discussed for the online evaluations.