Online Course Evaluations
Testing and Evaluation (T&E) now offers web-based online course evaluations as an alternative to the traditional paper evaluations for any courses that would benefit from online delivery. T&E uses Perception Assessment software which offers flexibility for setting up the evaluations and a secure environment for administering them.
Online evaluations are currently being used by a number of departments on campus to evaluate both online and traditional classroom courses. These departments have reported a number of advantages to evaluating courses online. These include:
- Instructors do not have to set aside class time for completion of course evaluations
- evaluations can more easily be changed from semester to semester without incurring the costly printing charges of paper evaluations
- evaluations can be easily customized to meet specific course requirements
- students can freely comment on the course without fear of being identified by their handwriting
- because students are completing the evaluation at their leisure, instructors have reported that the quality of comments is improved
One disadvantage of online course evaluations, however, is that it is much harder to capture feedback from all students in the class. The overall response rate for online course evaluations has been about 65% - 70%. This can vary by department and can be affected by the length of time during which the evaluation is available to students and the amount of encouragement to respond that the students receive.
Access to the online evaluations is controlled by students’ NetIds. Each student is allowed to access a course’s evaluation only one time so that students cannot adversely affect the results by completing the evaluation multiple times. In order to maintain students’ anonymity, the NetIds are not saved to the database along with the responses.
The process and timeline for implementing an online course evaluation is as follows:
- At least two weeks before you would like an online evaluation made available to students, you will need to provide T&E with either a paper or electronic copy of the evaluation(s) you want to administer. The evaluation will be set up in Perception to look as much as possible like the paper copy. You will then have the opportunity to review the online evaluation and modify the format and content. At this time, you should also inform T&E of the desired time period during which you would like to have the evaluation made available to your students. It will be available 24 hours a day during this period.
- At least one week before the course evaluation becomes available to students, you will need to provide an electronic list of the email addresses of the students for each course evaluation you want conducted online. If the course has multiple sections, you should provide a separate list for each section. The list of email addresses can be obtained from the “E-Class” page in ISIS (this requires SC_ITTBL2 – “view only Timetable” authorization).
- At the beginning of the evaluation period, T&E will send each student an email giving them access information and inviting them to complete the evaluation. It is helpful for instructors to alert their students beforehand that the email is coming, and encourage them to complete the evaluation and remind them that it is completely confidential.
- Midway through the evaluation period, T&E sends students a second email reminding them to complete the evaluation. You can determine whether the reminder email should be sent to all students or only to those who have not yet completed the evaluation.
- When the evaluation period has ended, evaluation responses are extracted from the Perception database and reformatted to look like course evaluations that have been scanned. Processing will be the same as for paper evaluations. Data from online course evaluations can be combined with data from other online course evaluations and/or data from paper evaluations to obtain department totals. Reports can be printed or sent electronically in .pdf format.
- Written comments are compiled by course and question. The comments can be printed and/or sent electronically as a Word document.
If you have other questions about online course evaluations or would like to implement an online evaluation, please contact:
Jane Grinvalsky
Testing and Evaluation Services
263-1942 or 262-5863
jmgrinva@wisc.edu