By Megan Osborn
Every semester, course evaluations give students an opportunity to share their thoughts about the quality of their classes. But this year, you could win an iPod Nano.
The university is piloting a new course evaluation program in which students fill out course evaluations online at their convenience. If a student fills out every one of their online course evaluations, he or she is entered in a drawing to win the iPod.
Although students will use an online portal to access evaluations, confidentiality is guaranteed. Sixty professors have volunteered to participate in the new pilot program.
Sociology professor Nick McRee, a member of the Committee for Teaching and Scholarship, appreciates the fact that it will cut down on paper work.
"The system right now is increasingly cumbersome," McRee said.
Engineering professor Joseph Hoffbeck, who serves on the On-line Course Evaluations Task Force, agrees that the new program will streamline the process.
"It's going to make it a lot faster to get your results, whereas right now at least in engineering, it takes a few weeks," Hoffbeck said.
English professor Herman Asarnow, however, points out that efficiency and convenience are not everything.
"When it comes to student course evaluations, convenience is a less-compelling reason than truthfulness, richness of data, and accuracy for choosing the kinds of questions used numerical or narrative - and the mode of presentation, paper or Web-based," Asarnow said.
Due to the fact that evaluations play a significant role in tenure decisions, professors who plan to apply for tenure within the next year were recommended not to join the pilot program.
Hoffbeck emphasizes that faculty take the evaluation results seriously, encouraging students to give feedback.
"Most professors really care about course evaluations," Hoffbeck said. "We use them to improve the course."
Bruce Drake, associate dean of the business school, believes the online evaluations will help professors improve their courses. He explained that the long waiting process is problematic for professors who teach a course twice in one year. Sometimes the fall course feedback does not come until weeks into the new spring semester, making it impossible to alter the course before the next section is taught.
One major concern regarding the new pilot is the possibility of a change in response rate from students.
McRee pointed out that going online could decrease response rates.
"The response rate is lower," McRee said. "Everyone acknowledges that."
Drake believes response rates will not be a serious problem.
"I think the data will be just as good," Drake said.
Hoffbeck points out that the university is testing the new types of evaluations to ensure it is a good system for feedback.
"We don't want to switch to a system where people don't participate," Hoffbeck said.
Drake believes that the system will be more convenient for students, pointing out that other universities, such as Notre Dame, use the online system with success.
"An advantage of online evaluations is that the student has time to fill it out," Drake said. "I think we'll get more comments and better comments."
When asked about the new evaluations, students were skeptical.
Junior Jessica Trautwine filled out two online evaluations for her classes this semester.
"I'm pretty old school - I like the way it was done before," Trautwine said. "It's not very convenient to find a time outside of class to do it as opposed to being in class."
Junior Annemarie Medrzycki agreed.
"It seemed like it took me a long time, and in class you can do them super quickly," Medrzycki said. "It also seemed that it's inconvenient to do them outside of class during homework time."
The efficiency of online evaluations will give the administration the ability to observe the average performance ratings of teachers for questions asked on a Likert scale of one to five. These quick and efficient measurements however, concern some faculty who see number averages as a narrow assessment of performance.
While the system is cumbersome, McRee points out there are some advantages to a slow process.
"If it is difficult to summarize then it becomes less likely to summarize performance off the cuff," McRee said. "It forces people to evaluate contextually."
Asarnow takes issue with using the one to five Likert scale, which the College of Arts and Sciences has required for the past five years and is now in all of the online evaluations. He points out that the scale can be interpreted differently by every given student.
"The Likert scale is a dumb, gross measure of response and is a symbol of our culture's silly pursuit of 'objectivity,'" he said.
Asarnow, however, is glad that the online program is flexible in that it lets professors customize their evaluations, adding additional questions to the required ones. For example, Asarnow has formatted his evaluation to include a narrative explanation of the number chosen for every Likert scale question.
McRee sees the pilot system as an opportunity to evaluate the evaluation process.
"This process opens another opportunity to discuss what we as staff want to get out of the evaluations," McRee said.
While the pilot program explores new options, some students wish the system wouldn't change.
"I would prefer doing them in class," Medrzycki said.
