UI course evaluations receive low response rate

University of Idaho course evaluations are due Dec. 9, but there seems to be a  struggle with response rates. Kenton Bird, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Media, said in order for the evaluations to be effective, they need at least a 50 percent response rate.
“I think it’s incredibly important for students to provide feedback on both the quality of an instructor and the content and structure of the course,” Bird said. “I’ve gotten some really great feedback from students.”
He said one critique involved a book he used for a course.
“I really liked (it), but students found it irrelevant and out of date. I liked it because I had used it for some time, but students said it was not working for them at all,” Bird said. “I also had a student who said they thought the exam was too much from the book and not enough lecture so it was too easy to skip lecture and just read the book.”
He said it’s more important from an administrator’s point of view to hear from students.
“Sometimes there are problems that don’t surface any other way,” Bird said. “There have been occasions where I got my first warning of a problem teaching style through the course evaluations.”
The evaluations are confidential and anonymous, which Bird said is the beauty of them.
Once submitted, Christine Lighty, institutional research analyst for Institutional Research and Assessment, said everything is divided into two pieces. She said the first piece includes the ID number that goes into a file so IRA knows to not remind students to evaluate that course again. The second piece goes to an anonymous database for instructors and administrators to access.
Evaluations are due the Sunday before finals begin, Lighty said, because some faculty were afraid the evaluations would be based on whether a student passed their final or not, and students were afraid their grade would be based on their evaluation, even though they are anonymous.
Bird said he’s never understood this rationale because the final exam is a part of the course.
He said his hope is the Teaching and Advising Committee will approve his request to extend the submission date through the end of finals week.
“The problem often with upper division classes is I think our students are so darn busy in the junior and senior year with final projects. The deeper you get into our program the busier you get at the end of the semester,” Bird said. “Once they get paper projects and exams done they can catch their breath and reflect on the semester experience. I’m hoping they will agree to extend the period to give people the chance to do it.”
He said some universities won’t let students access their grades until they evaluate the course, which he thinks is too extreme, but agrees the university needs to do something collectively to cultivate a culture at UI where students think filling out course evaluations is beneficial.
Lighty said whether students fill out their evaluations often depends on if the student feels a part of the process or if the instructor actively encourages students to participate.
“The message I send to all JAMM students is to fill out evals for all classes and be constructive and be specific with comments,” Bird said.
He said although the end of the semester evaluations are the only school-wide opportunity for feedback, there is another program instructors can use earlier in the year to obtain feedback from students, but for some reason, many don’t.
The Formative Assessment of Teaching is a survey instructors can issue to students with custom, detailed questions for earlier feedback on the course. Lighty said faculty might not use it because it’s only available during the first 10 weeks of the semester.
“Faculty hear about it and think it’s a great way to get feedback from students,” Lighty said. “I believe that they get so busy in the first part of a semester that they don’t think of it until it’s too close to the end of the open period.  I do know that the faculty who have used it are very happy with the results.”
As for the end-of-semester evaluations, Miranda Anderson, Teaching and Advising Committee chair, said they are evaluating the whole system, something that’s done every five years.
“At this point we are in the info gathering stage and there are many of these (requests) that attempt to increase response rate,” Anderson said.
She said they are reviewing not only ways to increase the low response rates, but evaluating the content of the questions asked and looking at examples from other institutions for a potential revised format.
“The committees target timeline at this point is to have a recommendation to faculty senate by the end of April,” Anderson said.
She said they will send out questions to constituents, including faculty, students and administration.
“The goal is to get feedback on what they think will work,” Anderson said. “We will also ask how they are used — for example, do faculty use feedback to make changes in the course?”
The evaluations aren’t only used to evaluate the course and provide feedback for instructors, Anderson said they also are used by administrators to evaluate for tenure and promotions.
Bird said, although he can’t speak for everyone, he reads all the numerical scores and all of the comments.
“I think they are a really important tool for increasing the quality of teaching,” Bird said. “But it only works if there is a high response rate.”
Otherwise, the feedback is generally only from the extreme ends of the scale — either those who loved the class or those who have only negative feedback. Bird said their goal is to get a mix of results ranging from negative to positive to better evaluate the course and instructor overall.
Anderson said with the review, the committee’s hope is to look at the big picture and increasing the teaching and learning culture that surrounds the evaluations while increasing response rates.
“Unfortunately sometimes there’s not positive (attitude) from faculty and students and perhaps that’s because there’s room for improvement,” she said. “We can’t go back to paper, so the challenge is how to increase the online response rate. And that’s what we hope to gain from students.”
Katy Sword can be reached at [email protected]

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