Some of the university’s top administrators and faculty gathered on Monday to solve a question that has stumped even the university’s brightest PhD.s: How can students be convinced to fill out course evaluations?
While the university has set a goal of having 70 percent of students fill out evaluations, more than 12,000 students failed to fill out a single course evaluation last semester, leaving them with a 61 percent participation rate. Since implementing online course evaluations in fall 2007, the rate has never been above 63 percent.
In an effort to solve this seemingly intractable quandry, Provost Nariman Farvardin assembled a panel of administrators, faculty and students to discuss ways to encourage students to fill out the evaluations. University administrators consider course evaluations a priority because without them, the university is not able to accurately evaluate or improve the quality of university faculty or determine how satisfied students are with their courses.
“We want to be proactive in doing new things to encourage our community so everyone participates,” Farvardin said.
Farvardin insisted the previous goal of 70 percent is reachable because some colleges have 75 percent participation rates. He said if three of the biggest colleges on campus – the business school, the behavioral and social sciences college and the arts and humanities college – improved their participation, the goal could be reached. But ultimately, he said, the power lies with students.
“If students want to see something happen, it will happen,” Farvardin said.
While many of the suggested proposals to raise participation rates were dismissed as either impractical or illegal, administrators did look favorably on a proposal to give students who did fill out course evaluations a chance at earlier registration dates.
The proposal would enter the names of students who filled out all their course evaluations into a lottery. Lottery winners would be given priority registration dates before most students register.
Other solutions, such as offering cash rewards for filling out evaluations or withholding grades until evaluations are completed, violate state law, officials said.
Renee Baird Snyder, the official in charge of course evaluations, said the best efforts were grassroots ones relying on word-of-mouth because students respect the opinions of their peers and professors.
At the forum, the university revealed the result of a phone study analyzing why students had failed to participate. While administrators expected that students who did not fill out course evaluations had not heard of them, the study indicated the vast majority of them had. Reasons for not filling out the survey varied, but the most common ones were that they were too busy or ran out of time. Other students said they did not fill them out because they were lazy, they did not think the evaluations would make a difference or because they forgot to do so.
The survey also found that participation in course evaluations decreases as students get older.
Farvardin said he expects the rates to improve over time, but that administrators will continue to work to find the right combination of strategies to motivate students to participate.
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