Response rates for professor evaluations have declined since the introduction of the online eValuate system.

In fall 2008, the last time the College of Arts and Sciences used paper, the response rate was 64 percent, said OU provost Nancy Mergler.

The College of Arts and Sciences response rate was 52 percent in spring 2010, a drop of 12 percent since changing to the online system.

OU has been using the online eValuate system for a year, while the College of Arts and Sciences has used the online system for two years.

For spring 2010, the spring student response rate was on average 62 percent, Mergler said.

Most campuses find that students need to be reminded to complete the evaluations; and Provost has built into the eValuate system a variety of mechanisms to remind students, Mergler said.

Some of these mechanisms include e-mail, social networking websites (like Facebook) and traditional campus media outlets such as oZone.

The Provost team is using other incentives to increase the response rate by giving away several iPads every semester in a random drawing for students who complete all course evaluations.

“The more care that students take with completing these evaluations, the more useful the information will be. I see it as a student’s responsibility in helping make OU even better,” Mergler said.

As students get used to the system the response rate should improve as well as the comments provided, Craig said.

“We, as a college, need to do more to prompt students to complete the evaluations,” said David Craig, Gaylord College associate dean.

The old system required instructors to take paper scantron sheets and select a class time within the last two weeks of the semester for students to fill out the forms.

“The old system was time consuming, used paper, and if the forms got dropped into a puddle, well, data was lost,” Mergler said.

The online system avoids issues of “dropping the forms in a puddle” or taking up valuable class time.

In addition to decreasing cost and waste, online evaluation also helped units give faster feedback to faculty regarding their evaluations, particularly during the tight fall evaluation cycle when academic units are anxious to receive the fall evaluations that are used in January for the calendar year faculty evaluation process, according to a press release from the provost’s office.

“As new reports are built within the system, I believe it will only continue to improve and will provide information to both administrators and professors more promptly,” said Debra Vaughn, Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts managerial associate.

The university as a whole had a response rate of 53.5 percent.

“We welcome additional suggestions for getting the OU student body to complete these, it is an important part of our instructional assessment,” Mergler said.

Spring 2010 student response by college
» Architecture — 60 percent
» Arts & Sciences — 52 percent
» Aviation — 57 percent
» Atmospheric & Geographic Science — 49 percent
» Business — 60 percent
» Earth & Energy — 50 percent
» Education — 62 percent
» Engineering — 58 percent
» Fine Art — 52 percent
» Gaylord — 55 percent
» Honors — 70 percent
» SIAS — 52 percent

*Source: OU provost Nancy Mergler

LINK:
» Online evaluations info