We live in a digital world, and it’s safe to say that the digital age has transformed higher education. Long-standing paper-based institutional processes have been streamlined or replaced by more efficient and flexible online systems. From student information systems to online registration, digitization has changed the ways in which information is collected, processed, and distributed within institutions.
The online student evaluation of instruction process (i.e., course evaluations) is one of these institutional processes that so many colleges and universities have put online with the goal of improvement, including; improved efficiency, better turnaround time of reporting to stakeholders, and increased overall value from this feedback process. One of the most common questions asked by institutions when considering a move to an online course evaluation process is how to get students to participate and get a good response rate. While there are a variety of successful strategies that can be implemented to get a good response rate, the answer to this question really depends on the mix of strategies that fit with your institution’s culture and policies, technology ecosystem, and student population.
As the leading provider of online course evaluation solutions to higher education, EvaluationKIT by Watermark has the experience to help your institution select strategies to fit your unique institutional needs, and implement these strategies with our proven solutions. The following are a few key topics to consider incorporating into your plan, whether you select EvaluationKIT or use an alternative approach.
While it seems obvious, one of the fundamental requirements of a successful online course evaluation process is making it easy for students to access their surveys. The more convenient it is for students to access their surveys, the better your response rates will be. At EvaluationKIT, we believe the course evaluation process should seamlessly integrate with your existing online institutional ecosystem, and surveys should be accessible where students already go within your institution’s online environment. Specific examples of these online access points include your institution’s Learning Management System (LMS) and student portal.
Not all integrations are made equal, nor are they equally effective when it comes to driving student response rates. For example, integration standards like LTI have made it a lot easier to integrate systems and processes. However, while a static LTI link displayed all term long in a student’s course or portal might accomplish the goal of single sign-on, it won’t give your process the punch it needs to really drive response rates. EvaluationKIT offers robust user integration functionality for all of the leading LMSs in higher education, as well as for student portals. Our integrations go beyond just single sign-on links by providing “active” survey access options that interrupt a student’s routine at the specific timing you want students to take their surveys. Our proven integration features make it easy for students to seamlessly access their surveys from within your LMS or student portal, and ultimately help drive student participation.
Providing multiple access points for students to take their surveys can also help drive response rates. For example, it might be more convenient at a given moment for a student to click a link in an email, versus logging into one of your institution’s systems. So, in addition to our user integrations, we encourage institutions to implement a comprehensive communication plan surrounding their course evaluation projects and incorporate email communications to assist in making surveys easy to access during the survey period. Emails should include direct and authenticated access to a student’s surveys, without requiring entry of a username and password. And, your email communication plan should include initial notifications, as well as automated reminders sent to non-respondents during the survey period to encourage participation. EvaluationKIT provides email functionality that supports these best practices, which can be easily setup, scheduled, and automated.
Depending on your success in driving student participation with other strategies and your overall response rate goals, you may want to consider making survey participation a requirement. Different strategies in this area include making survey completion a requirement for students to access courses in your LMS or making course evaluation a requirement for students to access grades online or gain early access to grades. Both approaches drive survey participation and may or may not be needed based on your environment and response rate goals. EvaluationKIT offers turnkey functionality that allows you to easily explore and adopt these different strategies should you wish to incorporate them along with your other approaches.
This doesn’t mean participation raffles, which can be helpful during an initial rollout and marketing of a new process, but aren’t strong long-term response rate strategies. What we mean here, specifically, is offering students the ability to review course ratings for specific survey questions. The ratings are controlled by administration, along with the decision around which survey questions to allow for reporting to students. Ultimately, students can significantly benefit from this process, which in turn can become a driver to participate. EvaluationKIT includes a Student Reporting module, which makes it easy for administration to implement, manage and control this type of strategy.
The key to successfully implementing these approaches is working with a technology partner who makes it easy to rollout the mix of strategies you choose for your online course evaluation process. EvaluationKIT has a rich set of features and functionality to offer you in this area, along with turnkey integrations for all of the leading LMSs in higher education. We encourage you to contact EvaluationKIT today for more information on how we can help you achieve your response rate goals and simplify your overall course evaluation and institutional survey processes.
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