After a successful fall 2015 trial of a campus-built online course evaluation platform, https://evaluate.uwaterloo.ca, Engineering is transitioning away from paper-based course evaluations. In 94% of classes this term, students will complete Course Evaluation Questionnaires electronically. This means a whole lot less waste, as the paper-based system used more than 20,000 paper questionnaires and 600 envelopes per year. It also means a lot more efficiency, as the online platform is integrated with campus data systems and doesn’t require staff time to manually scan completed questionnaires. And using electronic questionnaires means that we could potentially create different question sets for lectures, labs, and projects courses. But it also means anxiety about response rates.
At least one other Canadian institution switched back to the more wasteful and inefficient paper-based evaluations after their response rates plummeted with online evaluations. To prevent this from happening here, we’re keeping Course Critiques in class. Instructors have been asked to continue to give class time for students to complete their questionnaires, and class reps have been asked to work with course instructors to make sure this continues to happen. The system will send one reminder email during the evaluation period to anyone who has one or more incomplete evaluations, and instructors may also post reminders on the course LEARN page. We’re optimistic that in-class administration of evaluations, coupled with the strong relationship between our faculty and students, will allow us to maintain our traditionally high response rates.
Here’s what we want you to know:
- The evaluation period is March 7 – 18, 2016
- Students complete the online questionnaire during class
- Questions are the same
- Responses are still anonymous
- Comments are still screened for inappropriate/offensive content
- Results will still be made available online at https://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/critiques/
In the first week of the spring term, course instructors will be able to log in and review their scores and all the written comments. They’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!
Thank you for your time, your feedback, and, most importantly, for your continued support of the course evaluation process.
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