Hey engineers, it’s that time of the term again! With faculty course critiques around the corner, here are some things to get you up to date. Last Fall, Engineering introduced a brand new campus-built online course evaluation platform, Evaluate (https://evaluate.uwaterloo.ca). This successful trial transitioned the faculty away from the paper-based course evaluations of the past, with an astounding overall response rate of 58.8%, for which we are very grateful! As course critiques are approaching again, we’re aiming to maintain the high response rate for a smooth transition to electronic evaluations – it’s definitely time to make the move.
Teaching has significantly changed since the paper questionnaire was introduced over 20 years ago, when single-instructor, multi-section, lecture-based courses were the norm. Today, Engineering’s programs include labs, projects, seminars, team-taught, online, and other types of courses, many of which cannot be adequately evaluated with the questions found on the existing paper questionnaire. In the past, since paper questionnaires can’t be customized for different courses, critiques were not available for certain types of courses.
Moving to electronic delivery is the first step toward a new comprehensive evaluation system that will provide instructors of these varied course components with meaningful student feedback. We anticipate the introduction of a new set of core questions that are applicable to all course experiences plus additional question sets that are specific to different teaching modes. This will provide instructors of all types with meaningful student feedback.
This term, even more classes will be evaluated electronically – just under 3% will be evaluated using the paper questionnaires. This means a lot less waste, as the paper-based system used more than 20,000 paper questionnaires and 600 envelopes per year. It also brings 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 will be able to think about creating different question sets for lectures, labs, and project courses.
Starting November 14, students will be given class time to complete Course Critiques electronically. Make sure you find out from your professors when you’ll be given class time so that you can bring your web-enabled phone, tablet, or laptop to class, and take Evaluate for a spin.
Your active participation in course evaluations provides course instructors with valuable feedback on their teaching. Your feedback is important, as it helps guide teaching development efforts at the individual, program, and faculty levels. So please complete all of your course critiques – future engineers are counting on you!
Leave a Reply