Students might neglect online evaluations

Students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will soon be filling out course evaluations, and a drop in participation with online evaluations is a concern.

"(Online evaluation) participation is lower than it tends to be with in-class evaluations," said Roger Feese, an open source programmer for Information Services.

The participation rate has dropped in the four years since a test system for online evaluations was introduced, he said.

While not every department has seen a drop in the number of evaluations handed in, Feese said overall, the participation rate has gone down.

Ron Roeber, associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, said there tends to be more participation from students who feel strongly about a course, including those who either really enjoyed the course and got a lot of out of it or those who were upset or did not like the course.

"The ones we miss are the ones in the middle that could help faculty members," he said.

The university has only begun to discuss how to increase participation, Roeber said, and it would have to work with the faculty government to pass any policies.

Feese said it's hard to say whether this drop in participation was because of technology or the attitudes of the students toward online evaluations. He said he feels as though students have been more difficult to reach via e-mail, especially those who use a third-party server.

"It's kind of up to students to provide accurate e-mail addresses," Feese said.

E-mail filters can also cause a problem if an e-mail from the university is marked as spam and automatically sent to a spam folder.

Roeber said the university is looking at other policies other institutions have and seeing which one is right for UNL.

One of those strategies is to offer lottery prizes for students who fill out evaluations.

"Another strategy is to require that students fill out the evaluation to receive a credit," Roeber said. "That we cannot do at UNL."

This is due to bylaws prohibiting withholding student credits.

One of the strategies that has worked particularly well, Roeber said, was to make select questions available to the public.

"(Students) believe that filling out this evaluation form does make a difference," he said.

Other institutions have taken students to a computer lab and had them fill out the evaluations in class, like the paper evaluations.

"That's a good strategy," Roeber said. "But I'm not sure if that's feasible logistically."

The university hopes to increase student participation next year with a new Blackboard

tool making online course evaluations open to all professors who want them, Roeber said.

"Right now, the course evaluations that are online are a minority of classes," he said.

There are several advantages to having course evaluations online. 

"We can turn around the results faster to the faculty members," Roeber said.

It also saves time because the written comments on paper evaluations have to be typed up, Roeber said. This can take several months for some of the larger classes, he added.

While it isn't a huge amount, the university also saves money by using online evaluations.
"It's quicker, and it's less expensive," Roeber said.

kimbuckley@dailynebraskan.com