Course Evaluation Software - FAQ

How can we obtain a high response rate with online evaluations?

To obtain a high response rate, consider these points:

Send reminder emails to students. DigitalMeasures suggests that one email be sent to every non-respondent per three days the evaluation window is open, however CourseResponse can send them as frequent as once per day.
Keep the window during which students can respond to their evaluations open at least one week. DigitalMeasures recommends a window of at least one week, and optimally at least two weeks.
Use additional communication methods to bring awareness to the evaluations. Inform your instructors of the online course evaluations in advance, and encourage them to remind students to complete their evaluations. You may also notify students in other ways such as by distributing a one-page announcement in class, via postal mail, and/or with bulletin board postings in your buildings.
Convey to students how the results will be used. This is commonly overlooked point. Just as with anything in life, if someone asks you for your feedback but you believe it will be disregarded, you will likely not provide (good) feedback. Explain to students why their feedback is important.
Require that students respond (or opt-out) prior to receiving their grades, or release grades sooner to those who respond. If this is a step your campus can take, it is a sure way to obtain a very high response rate.
Assure students that their responses are anonymous. If students do not believe their evaluation results are anonymous, the response rate will likely be low. It is important to reinforce that all results submitted using CourseResponse are anonymous and that the results could never be linked to the student who submitted them.
Make it easy for students to access CourseResponse. You can make it as easy for them as clicking a link inside of another system such as Banner, Datatel, PeopleSoft, or SIS+ to immediately access the system. By making it easy for students to access the system, you will eliminate a potential roadblock for them to respond to their evaluations.
Share some of the results with students who fill-in all of their evaluations. If this is a step your campus can take, this will certainly have a positive effect on the response rate.
Offer an incentive to students for responding, such as a random prize drawing or a credit in your bookstore. This is a simple way to give students another reason to respond.

How can we use both online and paper-based evaluations for our courses?

You can specify on an academic unit-by-academic unit basis whether online or paper-based evaluations will be used. If you would like, this decision can even be made at the individual instructor level. After the decision has been made, the proper evaluations are administered, either electronically or paper-based. For the paper-based evaluations, after the evaluations have been completed and collected, the results are loaded into CourseResponse.

To load handwritten comments into CourseResponse, after the paper-based evaluations have been collected, a barcode is printed on each evaluation that is then read and stored with the evaluation results. When the handwritten comments are typed by people such as student workers, they simply add the number associated with the barcode to the results. This allows the handwritten comments to be linked to the scanned results.

How are students notified of online evaluations?

Students are notified of online course evaluations in whatever manner your campus deems appropriate. Typically, our clients choose to have us contact students via email. A web address is included in the email for students to visit. If you prefer, students can also login to a campus system with which they are already familiar (such as a portal) and click a link that automatically logs them in to CourseResponse. Regardless of the route you choose, the responses your students submit are still anonymous.

How many course evaluations can be run per year?

CourseResponse evaluations can be run as many times per year as you would like. This allows mid-term course evaluations to be conducted if desired.

How long can we keep the evaluation window open for students to respond?

You specify the evaluation window open and close times for your evaluation periods. Multiple evaluation periods can be run at once. Our clients typically run each period for one to three weeks to give students plenty of time to submit their responses.

What are the steps to get up and running?

Identify the core set of questions that will be asked for all courses.
Identify the pool of questions that can be selected at the department level, if any, and whether your departments can select their own questions.
Identify the pool of questions that can be selected by individual instructors, and whether your instructors can select their own questions. These questions can then be selected or written by your instructors.
Select the exact dates and times during which the window for submitting course evaluations will be open. Note that there can be more than one window if desired.
State whether instructors or anyone else should have access to see which students have responded (not their actual responses; only the respondent/non-responent names). If so, state whether this information can be viewed prior to the close of the evaluation window.
Select the exact date and time during which results should be made available to your instructors.
Submit files containing your institution's student, instructor and course data and specify the emails that should be sent to students to announce the evaluations, and to remind them to respond.

Are course evaluation results anonymous?

Yes. Students' login information is not associated with the data they have submitted on a particular evaluation. Each student's identifying information, the evaluations they need to complete, and the status of whether each has been completed is completely disconnected from the evaluation results that are submitted. An analogy to this is a presidential ballot, where you are given one ballot after you have verified your identity. You fill out the ballot in secret and then submit it to a machine that records your responses. Your responses are never connected to your identity. In the same way, responses submitted with CourseResponse could never be connected to the person who submitted the responses. DigitalMeasures has gone to great lengths to ensure a person's identity can never be connected to the results they submit.

Can one student only submit one response per course?

Generally, yes. For most courses, it is desired that each student only submit one evaluation response per course. There are complications to this where multiple instructors teach the same course, but CourseResponse handles even these cases by enabling students to respond to the course-specific questions once for the course and the instructor-specific questions once per instructor.

Can reminder emails be sent to students who have not responded?

Yes. Reminder emails can be sent as often as you like.

Can instructors choose their own questions?

Yes, if you desire. Your institution may choose to allow faculty to select from an approved pool of questions, or you can allow your instructors to select their own custom questions.

What kinds of questions can be asked of students?

You determine the kinds of questions that are asked of your students. Some common question formats include:

Checkboxes - allows respondents to select multiple values from a set of predefined options
Likert scales - allows respondents to specify their level of agreement to a statement
Radio buttons - allows respondents to choose one of a predefined set of options
Drop-down boxes - allows respondents to choose one of a predefined set of options
Open-ended questions - allows respondents to share freeform feedback such as text, numbers, and/or symbols

Can students opt-out of completing evaluations?

Yes. Good survey design states that potential survey respondents should have the ability to decline to complete an evaluation. If you desire, students can state that they would like to decline filling-in their evaluations. This indicates that the student "responded" to the evaluation, even though he or she chose to opt-out of completing it.

How long does it take for instructors to receive their results?

Most of our clients choose to hold evaluation results until the time at which grades are finalized and the potential no longer exists for grades to be affected. Emails can then be immediately sent to your instructors, providing timely, detailed feedback.

Who can see course evaluation results?

Our clients select who can view specific results just as they are able to customize many of the other components of CourseResponse. Typically, instructors can view evaluations for their courses while department chairs, deans and/or administrators can view evaluations for their respective departments, schools and colleges. The way in which this is defined is completely up to you.

Can students see other students responses?

Students cannot see other student responses through the system unless you specify that they should be able to do so.

How long are results kept online and accessible?

Results collected using CourseResponse are always accessible. This allows you to run detailed historical reports at any time.

Can we publish results to our website?

Yes. CourseResponse makes it easy to publish course evaluation results on your website. This is accomplished by downloading reports from CourseResponse and uploading them to your website, or connect your website to CourseResponse in real-time.

Can CourseResponse pick "winners" for random prize drawings?

Yes. If your institution chooses to offer a random prize drawing as an incentive for students to complete their course evaluations, DigitalMeasures can randomly select winners from a list of respondents. However, it is the institution's responsibility to govern the contest and supply the prizes. Digital Measures' role is solely to select random winners from qualified respondents.

What incentives can we offer our students to submit responses?

A few examples of incentives that you can offer include prize drawings, gift certificates or discounts to the campus bookstore.

Can we use data from CourseResponse in ActivityInsight?

Yes. If you work with DigitalMeasures for ActivityInsight, your reporting utilities can be integrated so that any of your institution's report templates pull data from any combination of DigitalMeasures solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions

General questions

Regarding the evaluations

Regarding viewing results

After the evaluations close