It would be great to have a survey built in to each course so that when an instructor closes a course it sends out a link to a course/instructor survey. Results could be send to Academic Dean and/or Dept. Heads.
Date
Votes
61 comments
-
Shane Flynn I like the idea of built in surveys for the courses, but for us, when the course is closed is too late for us. We currently do our end of semester surveys during class so we can make sure we have a large percentage of completions. We tried it one year just sending out a link to for students to do on their own and had very few actually take the time to complete them.
-
Isaac Grauke Thanks for the feedback guys. I've always thought it would be cool to do course evaluations through Populi. We'll definitely keep it in mind for future updates!
-
Adam Sentz Keep the feedback coming on this one. Do you use a standard evaluation for every course? Would you like it if they were mandatory - as in "no evaluation = no grade"? Should they be anonymous? What kind of things do you ask? What question types (multiple choice, essay)? What kind of reporting do you find most useful?
-
Robert Murphy Hi Adam,
Our IT guy, Shane Flynn, forwarded me a link to this thread.
Visible School currently uses two kinds of evaluation forms. The standard form utilizes a basic likert scale and a couple of optional essay responses for additional feedback. The other evaluation form is specific to one of our courses, Worship and accountability--that form has 4 essay responses. The only other variation is that some of our courses have two instructors.
We've been using surveymonkey, which means I have to create 100+ individual surveys and collector links (one survey per course). It is very tedious. I can send a private link to examples of our Instructor/Course Evaluation forms if that'd help.
I like the no evaluation=no grade, but I'm not the Dean, so I can't really speak in to that area; I'm just a minion dreaming of a better day :)
Anonymous is good, however, if there was a way for us to see who hasn't completed the survey, that would help us track down the slackers (or see if a lack of responses could be traced back to a forgetful instructor).
Thanks, Populi, for being great.
-
Adam Sentz Thanks Robert - really helpful stuff.
-
Clint Nelson We use www.surveymethods.com (see a sample evaluation here: http://www.surveymethods.com/EndUser.aspx?F9DDB1ADF1B3AFA3.
The survey needs to be anonymous if released before a course is closed (so students do not fear repercussions for negative evaluations). Enforcing no grade for no survey is a good thing.
An evaluation report should include the average score for each question, all essay responses, and a comparison to that course's previous scores and instructor's previous scores.
It would also be nice to see a table with all the evaluation summaries and/or faculty so that you could filter or sort. This way an Academic Dean could quickly see instructors that scored high or low.
-
Isaac Grauke Thanks Clint!
-
Ernest Tako I like the discussion here. It would be really cool to have the course evals done through Populi. The no eval, no grade is a wonderful must!!! our evals are mostly done on a likert scale which i do not think you would have any issues implementing!
-
Elizabeth Reed We currently use Constant Contact to do our course Evaluations. We have two evals / term: a MidTerm eval that is purely essay to red-flag any problems that need to be corrected immediately, AND an EndTerm eval for a more thorough look. The EndTerm eval is a combo of scale and essay responses.
Issues for us would be multiple instructors / course: they need to be evaluated separately. Also, we use a 'logic tree' in all of our surveys so that students only see relevant questions.
Anonymity is key although I do like the idea of having a list of "non participation" students :)
We have found through trial and error that including images in the evaluations increases participation, so that would be important too.
-
Shannon Kropf Elizabeth, I am interested in your comment about using images to increase participation. What types of images do you use?
-
Elizabeth Reed @ Shannon Kropf
Strangely enough our most effective images are in the body of the initial email that we send to students; a big picture of a golden retriever or other fuzzy animal along with text that promises the survey will be easy, quick and painless :)
then we use pictures along the way, at the page breaks, to encourage them to keep going, "you're almost done", people smiling, more animals, nature scenes.
courses with multiple instructors can be confusing, so we like to include head-shots of the various teachers
at the end of the survey I always have them automatically directed to some funny or silly YouTube video
-
Robert Murphy @ Elizabeth Reed
Fantastic! I love it!
-
Shannon Kropf @Elizabeth--Brilliant! I just did the Academic Catalog orientation session with our new students. It's a difficult session and they usually glaze over; this year I used pictures of my cats, the local fairgrounds, and goofy pictures of instructors completely randomly throughout the presentation and it definitely held them better than years past!
I know we're off topic. We shall now return to our regularly scheduled message board. :)
-
John Schwandt It would be great if this "survey" question could be part of the "test" feature. It is like essay but has no correct answer. If you wanted to, you could use an entire test of survey questions to perform course evaluations. (as an aside, I would also start each quiz with a survey question like "Write the name of the person who is proctoring your quiz". I currently do this with an essay question worth 0 points but I still have to deal with "grading" their answers. If we had this, I would probably ask some survey questions on exams to get feedback about the course or test.)
-
Dennis Hixson Yes, please. We have a new academic dean and he is wanting to get a pulse our curriculum and faculy.
-
Samuel Figueroa very important!!
-
Allan Crowson I definitely support functionality for course/instructor evaluations. Here are some features I would really love to see with it:
- Anonymous, but trackable: We do not want to be able to see what Student Doe submitted, but we do want to know if Student Doe submitted anything.
- Template driven, but flexible: We have a standard set of questions that we use institution-wide, but we also have a need for a slightly different set of questions for particular sets of students. I would like to be able to create a "Default-Institution" template, for example, and a "Default-Distance" template.
- Integration as an assignment or lesson. For instance, I would like to be able for a given course, to create a "Lesson" that consists of instructions about the survey, and then a link to the survey, similar to an exam. This would also allow us to provide incentives for response via points that contribute to the final grade.
- Alternatively, I could live with having links to surveys show up when the student first logs in, similar to the list of links to their courses. Part of the course definition would include a switch for including a survey or not, along with open and close dates or date points. For instance, I could, when setting up a course, have a survey/evaluation section of questions. I could choose from a list of templates that have been created (with a default to "None" to allow for people who do not wish to use this functionality, and then choose a start and end point. The start/end could be designated as static dates, or perhaps something that would allow us to indicate that we open the evaluation one week before class end, and close the survey on the class end date, without having to type in the dates themselves. The links would only appear on the student's home page whenever the survey opens up, and links would not appear once the evaluation for a given course had been completed. Something like this, for a student enrolled in "BI 101:" Most of the time during the course, a link such as BI 101; when the evaluation opens up, two links (BI 101 and Click to proceed to evaluation); once evaluation was completed, one link and one item of text (BI 101 and Evaluation complete).
- Designated recipient of results following the close of the survey, or perhaps the ability for authorized users to access a report of the results. This could be part of the template for a course or survey.
I really hope this will come about. Evaluation is part of life for educational institutions, and schools end up using all sorts of third party solutions for better or for worse, and trying to find incentives for participation. Being able to offer the evaluations within Populi, and to manage the participation incentives within Populi, would be a wonderful step, in my opinion.
-
Brian Zylstra We're currently attempting to integrate course/teacher evaluations into our digital workflow with Populi, and I'm very excited to see this marked as "planned". We currently use a set evaluation for every course, and that evaluation asks for feedback on the course and professor. As said above, knowing who has filled out the evaluation is just as important as not knowing what they have said on it.
-
Christal Fehr I love the no evaluation, no grade... students need incentive to complete these forms.
Important to keep the form anonymous but still be able to track who has and who hasn't submitted the form.
Would be great to be able to send reminders to only those who haven't submitted the evaluation (though with the no grade being release, I'm sure the student won't forget).
Our surveys are fairly basic - a serious or questions which students rate on a scale of 1-5.
Template driven but flexible is also a must for us... basically we create the same survey for each course, but allow professors to insert one or two of their own questions into their course. So, I set up the survey using a template, but may adjust that slightly for each course.
Any idea of time frame for this implementation? We're right now looking into some better survey software, and the ability to do course evaluations through Populi plays a huge part in whatever decision we make for next September.
-
Richard Wilson In addition to student evaluation of professors, would it be possible to add other evaluations of professors as well? Such as a Dean evaluation of a Professor, or a Professor evaluation of another Professor?
-
Deborah Forteza We could certainly use Dean and Peer Evaluations, too!
-
Isaac Grauke @Richard @Deborah How exactly does that work? Can anyone choose to evaluate another staff member at any point anonymously? Or is it an annual thing? What benefit would there be to having this managed in Populi? With student course evaluations it makes sense to me because there are lots of students and lots of courses. Help me to understand what the process looks like. Thanks for the feedback!
-
Deborah Forteza Peer evaluation is part of the annual review of the faculty. The dean assigns one faculty member to evaluate the other each year.
The benefit of having this in Populi would be centralization of data, so that the dean with one click could have all that faculty member's information.
I think one big challenge might be who gets to see the faculty evaluation. Surely it shouldn't be all staff or even all the rest of the faculty.
Do you have any specific questions? I'm not sure what to tell you about this.
-
Shannon Kropf Just wanted to second, third, and fourth the comments from Deborah and Richard! The faculty evaluation process at our place is currently fraught with documents spread over different places on the server; having this information in Populi allows the dean or peer reviewer to simply go sit in on a class, complete the survey, and have it stored with the faculty member's profile information. So very handy. So very efficient! If the faculty member could self-evaluate here, that's even better.
Like Deborah, I'm happy to answer any questions or help in any way.
-
Richard Wilson Perhaps the only ones that could enter a Dean evaluation would be someone with an Academic Administrative roll. That may not be perfect, but hopefully there are not many people with that roll designated. If the peer-to-peer evaluations just had a Faculty roll, then professors could review each other. Perhaps, have a drop down menu where the professor to be evaluated is selected and have various options for the Dean or Professors to choose or type (I'm assuming this would need to be determined by the school). Once they hit "submit" the file could attach to the faculty members profile somehow and could be reviewed by the professor himself and whoever has a Academic Administrative rolls. This way other faculty members would not be able to look at the reviews of their peers (unless, of course, they had the Academic Administrator roll).
Just some ideas.
-
Brian Zylstra Another way this feature could be used is yearly (or however often you do it) evaluations of staff or faculty that could be tied to their account, and visible only to those who need to know. Boss & staff members, probably. This could be flexible enough to allow peer reviews, etc. After group work the students could review their group, and if the instructor wished it could be visible to the other students, either anonymously or not.
Seems like there are many different options if it becomes a tagable object.
-
Deborah Forteza Yes, yearly staff peer reviews would also help us.
-
Brian Zylstra Is there a timeline for this addition? I ask because if it isn't planned by next semester, we'll need to start looking at other options.
-
Adam Sentz @Bryan - I can't make any promises as to a specific date, but I can tell you that course evaluations are very high on our list of things we want to add right now. Stay tuned!
-
Carolina Cordero Awesome! I was about to add this feature request and I am glad it has been added so long ago. We would greatly benefit from having student/teacher evaluations and also Academic Dean/Teacher evaluations. Our method takes the assistant to the academic dean a long time to process , we just use a hard copy form of the evaluation and at the end of the semester every professor gets an envelope in their mailboxes with a specific number of evaluations, those are distributed the last day of class for students to complete, then these are returned to the academic dean. It sounds simple but it is very time consuming. Adding a feature like this to Populi will help us greatly. I am willing to even send a copy of the evaluation we use via email to Adam or Issac, so you you can look at it. I hope this is something we can see implemented in the very near future. And I do agree with James Crawson on his suggestion referring to being anonymous but at the same time able to track if it was turned in. I also think a spreadsheet with all the results will help greatly, because that is the whole purpose of the evaluations, to give the academic dean an overview of the teacher performance. Thank you!
Please sign in to leave a comment.