<p>According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, as a growing number of colleges put course evaluations online, fewer students are filling them out.</p>
<p>The Chronicle says:</p>
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Colleges thought they were enhancing efficiency when they moved their course evaluations online, but an unintended consequence of the shift to evaluations not filled out in class is that students started skipping them altogether, The Boston Globe reported today. According to the Globe, some institutions concerned about the dropoff in participation are offering incentives to students, such as lotteries for iPods or meal vouchers at Northeastern University and pizza for the class with the highest return rate in some MIT departments. The Globe says other institutions are considering withholding students' grades until they submit the evaluations.
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<p>My own suspicion is that some students aren't doing the evals simply because they're not being forced to, but I wonder if others are concerned that online forms that promise anonymity may really not be anonymous and could be traced back to their authors. Thus students might be wisely wary that nasty comments about a current prof could come back to haunt them when that same prof turns up on their class schedule or thesis evaluation committee down the road.</p>
<p>Current students .... are your course critiques online? Are you doing them? Do you plan to? Are you fearful that electronic evals that are billed as anonymous can be traced?</p>
<p>At my current school, they make us do it in class. So pretty much we are forced to do it but no one really cares about it.</p>
<p>The good part about making students do it in class is that it WILL get done and by everyone. I would guess that online versions may often be completed only by students at either end of the spectrum … those who loved the class and want to tell the world and those who hated it … and have an axe to grind.</p>
<p>Do you think that students with more middle-of-the-road opinions will bother with the online forms if they’re not required?</p>
<p>To be honest, I doubt they will fill out the online forms if they aren’t required to. Most people would be too lazy imo and I would be one of them.</p>
<p>Would you do it for a meal voucher, iPod raffle, pizza party, etc.? ;)</p>
<p>No, I’m not afraid of them tracing my evaluation back to me - I believe professors don’t even have access to it. In 2 of my classes last semester, they posted the evaluation on Blackboard and most of us were too lazy to fill it out. Then they made us do it in class and tossed out the online ones entirely. No one minds doing it in class because we’re there anyway. Putting it online and making it optional is a bad idea, because of self-selection bias.</p>
<p>I think course evalations are usually a waste of time. I do have 1 great professor this semester who passes them out in the middle of the course as well as the required ones at the end, and he likes to read comments right away, and then addresses the issues raised in class. But most professors are not like this.</p>
<p>I do all of mine, because if we don’t do all of them, we don’t have access to previous course evaluations when we’re choosing classes for the next term. So they are “online,” technically, but they’re not available to the wider public – only to people associated with the university.</p>
<p>They have a system where students can’t see their grades until after the evaluations are due, and teachers can’t see their evaluations until they’ve submitted their grades. This is a little bit of a comfort, but I do worry a little that if I give a teacher a bad review, they’ll figure out it was me and if I have him/her again, next time they’ll give me a bad grade. I still try to fill them out honestly, though, because I base my decisions somewhat heavily on the previous evaluations, and I wouldn’t want to mislead any future students who may be reading my evaluations.</p>
<p>At Stanford we get to see our grades 2 weeks earlier if we fill out all of our course evaluations (which are online) than if we don’t fill them out. It’s a good incentive and I think most people fill out their evals.</p>
<p>^That’s actually quite brilliant. </p>
<p>We always do them on one of the last days of classes…it’s a good break from what we’re normally doing then (stressing about finals).</p>
<p>They switch from paper to online based evals at my undergrad school while I was there and said the response rate went from 90% down to around 50%.</p>
<p>I think you can actually more anonymous online than in class, since if there’s a “comments” section a professor will be able to recognize your handwriting. Recognizing writing styles off of just typing is much more difficult.</p>
<p>Do not think about anything else when you could think about laziness instead.</p>
<p>At my school, you’re not allowed to see your grades for certain classes until you’ve submitted your online course evaluations. I didn’t realize that the other course evaluations were optional until my second semester. But I’ve just gotten into the habit of filling them out. If I love a class, I want to make sure the professor gets the praise s/he deserves (since those evaluations end up in their tenure files), and if I don’t love a class, I like the chance to give constructive criticism. For example, I (and pretty much all my classmates) find one of my classes this semester to be super frustrating (poor teaching/lecturing, poor setup and organization, etc), so you bet I’m going to leave a very long and detailed review for my instructors. (In their defense, they’re new to teaching. But no one should have to suffer through such a poorly taught class.)</p>
<p>However, I’m always slightly paranoid about submitting reviews for smaller classes, especially writing-intensive ones. I do think that after reading several papers, my professors can probably recognize my style pretty well. Thankfully, I’ve only had positive things to say for the small English classes I’ve taken.</p>
<p>We are asked to fill them out before we have our course grade in hand, which I don’t think is fair. I am quite sure a GSI ruined me on my final exam because I was somewhat critical of her course.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, we spent the day before our midterm in “politics of civil rights and liberties” looking at pictures of biracial people and guessing what races they are-- she was trying to make some kind of a point about plessy vs ferguson. I wasn’t going to say it was the best course I’ve ever taken.</p>