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Online evals get mixed reviews

Director of Institutional Research Yingxia Cao, discussed the University of La Verne’s teacher evaluations Sept. 11 in the Presidents Dining Room. Cao’s contribution to the Faculty Research Lecture Series focused on a comparison of online and paper evaluations. Cao, studying for her Ph.D., has one semester remaining at SUNY-Albany. / photo by Seanette Garcia
Director of Institutional Research Yingxia Cao, discussed the University of La Verne’s teacher evaluations Sept. 11 in the Presidents Dining Room. Cao’s contribution to the Faculty Research Lecture Series focused on a comparison of online and paper evaluations. Cao, studying for her Ph.D., has one semester remaining at SUNY-Albany. / photo by Seanette Garcia

Alexandra Lozano
Editorial Director

No more end-of-semester grunting from the students – it was the faculty’s turn to discuss online course evaluations.

Director of Institutional Research Yingxia Cao and Research Analyst James E. Schirmer, along with Associate Vice President Al Clark, presented the lecture, titled “Online Course Evalua­tions: Are the Results Different from Traditional Ones?” at the semester’s inaugural Faculty Lecture Series event on Sept. 11.

About 20 people gathered in the President’s Dining Room to listen to the lecture.

“The amount of written statements had tripled, quadrupled, the actual content for the qualitative (questions) had advanced as well,” Clark said about online evaluations.

The team’s research examined the response to both online and paper course evaluations as well as how many students responded.

“In terms of response rates, the online response rates were consistently low,” Schirmer said. “Online evaluations has (a) 17 percent response rate lower on average.”

The University of La Verne made the switch from paper to online evaluations three years ago.

Clark explained that one semester the Scantron machine that scanned the course evaluations broke down.

He wanted to see if the school could make the transition from paper to online evaluations.

“We’re down to three or four people that opt out of it by using paper,” Clark said.

Cao researched for months and presented the results to the Association for Institutional Research in Kansas City, Mo.

“With the data I have, we use four sets,” Cao said.

The four sections researched were paper and online evaluation results from the last three years, the 31 faculty who converted from paper to online evaluations, the 25 courses with both formats available in the same term, and 15 paired courses.

The researchers found significant differences in the paper and online evaluations.

“The online comments were longer and more descriptive,” Schirmer said.

On average, half of online evaluations had a 50 response rate.

“There’s a certain amount of courses with a zero response rate,” Clark said. “Both online or paper about 10 percent of courses have a 100 percent response rate.”

Online courses consistently got more response except for one of the comment questions: “How can this course be improved?”

“It shows for the most part, students described the course as more positive and the teacher more negative,” Clark said.

Overall the evaluations were similar in response rate. However the online evaluations received slightly more comments.

Faculty discussed methods to encourage more students to take these evaluations including withholding grades until they are completed.

“We have to develop a system to get a response from every class,” Clark said.

Course evaluation includes 22 quantitative and four comment questions.

Mark Nelson also contributed to the research, but was not present at the lecture.

Alexandra Lozano can be reached at alozano@ulv.edu.

Alexandra Lozano
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Seanette Garcia
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