Low Participation in Course Evaluation

[the-tenure-track-prof]

Hello. Course evaluations have opened this week and I barely see any student filling out the evaluations. Thus far, only 14% of all students filled it out and in one class of 18 students not even a single one filled out the evaluation. Due to the COVID-19, the university`s policy has been to show leniency with students when it comes to papers and course work. I`ve provided many extensions and removed papers that require a visit to the library.
I am tenure track and this is my first year so course evaluation is really important to me. What is your experience with course evaluations this semester thus far?

Thanks.

[Puget]

Have you reminded them to fill them out and explained why it is important?

A personal ask gets better results than an auto-email every time, even in normal times. In seminars this is usually enough for me.

In large lectures, I've sometimes said that if >90% fill it out everyone gets an extra credit point on the final-- it makes very little difference to final grades, but they will do anything for extra credit (I may have gotten that idea from the "Jedi mind tricks" thread on the old fora-- do we have that here? It was great!).

Here we are not doing formal course evaluations this semester, but have the option of doing one that only we can see the results of (though we can still include them in our tenure files if we so choose).

[fourhats]

Course evaluations are suspended here for this semester. Partly because the university isn't sure that they'll be completed, but also because the pivot to online instruction may adversely affect faculty, as students vent their frustration with this change in teaching.

Are you hoping for evaluations for feedback on your teaching, or are you thinking that not having enough of them could be held against you going forward? This semester is such an anomaly that it's hard to believe that you'd be penalized for low returns.

[arcturus]

Student evaluations of courses are optional at my institution this semester (by choice of instructor; they have always been optional for students). Some instructors are using the official online forms, particularly those on the tenure track or those who would like feedback on teaching innovations (implemented before or after the COVID-19 disruptions).  Others are instituting queries within the LMS.  If your response rate is low, I agree with Puget that you should remind the students to fill them out and explain why you find their feedback so useful. However, I would not make the case that you need the evaluations for tenure, but, rather, that you find their feedback useful to improve the course for the next time you teach it. In other words, their future colleagues will benefit from the information they provide today, just like they have benefited from previous students. Be sure to mention that they should include aspects of the course that they liked, so that you will know to retain those portions, not just the aspects that they think can be improved.

[RatGuy]

I can see how many students have submitted their online evals, but not which students specifically. So I always tell them that I'll give them bonus if I can get above 85% response rate. Pretty sure that's a Jedi Mind Trick I read in the old fora. It works to get response rates up, and a high response rate usually means higher overall numbers.

[Parasaurolophus]

My response numbers are still pretty low (classes ended ten days ago), and I've sent them a reminder already. I'll send them one more in a few days. My response rate is usually ~70%+ because evaluations are all administered in-person here; the admin hasn't said a thing about evals this semester, and nobody conducted them, so I placed a survey on the course LMS. So far, my response rate is about 43% across all courses.

I think you just have to expect that the response rate is going to be pretty low this semester.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

Thanks all. The impact of the pandemic on classes and university, in general, is evident. Our university said that faculty will not be penalized for bad evaluations as they expect that students will be angry and frustrated and will vent their anger in the course evaluations.

I just wonder if anyone had the experience with low rate of participation in course evlauation? Did anyone talk to you about it?. In our university I see the results of evaluation in prior semesters and there are many professors who have "0" students who filled out the evaluations or 2/10.

I don't think I will offer extra credit this semester because I have been very generous in grading and extensions that gave students extra time to study and good grades overall.

[downer]

Do we expect student evaluations will be generous or mean this semester? Maybe more of both.

If I needed student evaluations for some purpose I guess I'd encourage them. But I don't, and so I don't plan to encourage them.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

It might be the case. It has been only one week since the course evaluation opened for students. There are still two more weeks to go until the evaluations close and become available for viewing. I shall wait and see how the rate of students participation will look like.

[darkstarrynight]

If you can, make a short video clip explaining why the evaluations are important, not just to you, but to them. Explain that you will be able to take their feedback and immediately learn from their suggestions to update/improve the course. I always ask very specific questions like which guest speakers would you invite back and why? I also ask questions when I use a new text, and find out what topics I can add to/remove from the curriculum. I think a short video clip explaining the evaluation and its importance is helpful. Also, I also reiterate that the evaluations are anonymous.

[Hegemony]

Ever since course evaluations went online, some years back, participation rates have been low. Used to be that you'd hand out sheets of paper in class, and a student would watch over them and deliver them to the right office after everyone had filled them out. You'd get a 95-100% success rate with those. With electronic ones, they have no more incentive to do them than I have incentive to fill out all the "Are you happy with our service?" annoying emails I get after I buy something online. So overall it's a failure of imagination of the system. I'd say average return rates are way below 50%.

And because you are new to this, OP, you probably don't yet realize that most of them are useless anyway. You'll get one that says "Way too much reading" and one that says, "This class was stupid, hardly any reading," and one student you gave a low grade to will rant about how you're a disgrace to the university, and a few more will say "It was okay."  And if you ever made any mistake in class, like on one single day you gave them handout B when you meant to give them handout A, 99% of them will say, "She  gives the wrong handouts!", making it sound as if you have some kind of persistent congenital handout problem, which you will have to try desperately to explain away come tenure time.

Basically any semester in which you don't get course evaluations is a good semester.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

Ever since course evaluations went online, some years back, participation rates have been low. Used to be that you'd hand out sheets of paper in class, and a student would watch over them and deliver them to the right office after everyone had filled them out. You'd get a 95-100% success rate with those. With electronic ones, they have no more incentive to do them than I have incentive to fill out all the "Are you happy with our service?" annoying emails I get after I buy something online. So overall it's a failure of imagination of the system. I'd say average return rates are way below 50%.

And because you are new to this, OP, you probably don't yet realize that most of them are useless anyway. You'll get one that says "Way too much reading" and one that says, "This class was stupid, hardly any reading," and one student you gave a low grade to will rant about how you're a disgrace to the university, and a few more will say "It was okay."  And if you ever made any mistake in class, like on one single day you gave them handout B when you meant to give them handout A, 99% of them will say, "She  gives the wrong handouts!", making it sound as if you have some kind of persistent congenital handout problem, which you will have to try desperately to explain away come tenure time.

Basically any semester in which you don't get course evaluations is a good semester.

Your description is pretty accurate and it amazes me that students can have such a tunnel vision generalized from an isolated incidence and pass a judgment based on that. Based on what you said if a course receives zero evaluations, no one will be thinking "what have you said to students that they didn't fill out the evaluations??".

[Ruralguy]

We've asked people to do it, but they won't count for reviews of faculty unless the faculty members requests that they be added to the mix.

[marshwiggle]

Ever since course evaluations went online, some years back, participation rates have been low. Used to be that you'd hand out sheets of paper in class, and a student would watch over them and deliver them to the right office after everyone had filled them out. You'd get a 95-100% success rate with those. With electronic ones, they have no more incentive to do them than I have incentive to fill out all the "Are you happy with our service?" annoying emails I get after I buy something online. So overall it's a failure of imagination of the system. I'd say average return rates are way below 50%.

This is why I have my own evaluations for my courses and labs, that ask much more targeted questions, and they fill them out during the last class or lab. I explain to students that I ask the questions becuase I actually want to know what they think(!?!) They're pretty good about doing them. (They're all multiple choice, so it makes it easier.)

[ciao_yall]

At the uni where I did my EdD, they attempted to rework the evaluation system.

First thing they discovered was, after applying super-sophisticated statistical models, was that students who liked the professor personally rated them highly. Those who didn't like the prof gave them low ratings. This was depicted on a chart as a big clustery blob of data points.

So they decided to try to see whether wording the questions differently gave different results. They surveyed students with a 100-question survey (not a typo) to see if students answered any differently. These results were invalid because of survey fatigue, obvi.

Not sure whatever happened.