It’s course evaluation time, and change is in the air!
This term, alongside the paper-based Course Critiques, the Faculty of Engineering is running a trial of a campus-built online course evaluation platform. Ten undergraduate courses have been selected for the trial; that’s about 4% of fall 2015 undergraduate evaluations. This may seem small, but we’re hoping the small size will limit the impact that any unforeseen issues might have.
As part of this trial, students in these select classes will be asked to complete their Course Critiques electronically, during class, using their web-enabled mobile devices. We’re hoping this trial will demonstrate that this new platform will work smoothly in the Engineering context. One of the big benefits we see with the online platform is that any student who isn’t in class on evaluation day will still be able to complete the evaluation, as it will be open for the entire two-week evaluation period.
Other than the obvious difference, the paper and electronic evaluations are pretty much the same: they are both anonymous, they are both completed during class, they both ask the same questions and they are both administered during the same two-week period: November 16 to 27, 2015.
Students in classes included in the trial will receive instructions during class about how to complete the online evaluation. For the remaining 96% of undergraduate evaluations, the paper-based questionnaires will be sent out as usual to professors and instructors, and they will bring them to class sometime during the two-week evaluation period. Student volunteers will distribute the blank questionnaires, collect the completed questionnaires and deliver them to the EngSoc office. At the Screening Meeting, your Course Critiques Director (coursecritiques@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca) will work with student volunteers to screen the written comments and prepare the packages for scanning and processing. Comments submitted as part of the online trial will also be available for review at the Screening Meeting.
In the first week of the winter term, course instructors will receive a summary of the numerical data and the original completed questionnaires so that they can review the comments; instructors of courses included in the online trial will be able to review their data and comments online. Summaries of course data will be posted online for you and future students to review (see links at uwaterloo.ca/engineering/teaching-learning/course-evaluations). We’re counting on you to provide meaningful, relevant feedback; instructors rely on your input to help improve their teaching. Think of this as your chance to influence the way that courses are taught and support change for the better!
The last thing we’ll add is that one of the best ways to drive teaching improvement is to make sure that our exceptional instructors receive recognition. We’ve created a teaching award nomination form that you can complete to let us know which instructors you would like to see nominated for a teaching award. Visit uwaterloo.ca/engineering/teaching-award-nomination to complete the form.
Thank you for your time, your feedback and, most importantly, for your continued support of the course evaluation process.
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