Course evaluations are part of the semesterly and annual rhythm of life at most higher education institutions. But despite the efforts administrators invest in course evaluations, few institutions leverage the full potential of student surveys. Accreditation is one area where course evaluations are an underappreciated but invaluable resource.
Your institution is probably already investing resources into course evaluations. This guide will help maximize your return on investment (ROI) by explaining how course evaluations can become an asset for achieving and maintaining accreditation.
Accreditation and course evaluation are related in several ways. Course evaluations can assist with achieving and maintaining accreditation by:
With a clear understanding of how course evaluations can support accreditation processes by driving, detecting, and documenting conformity to standards, you’re well-positioned to optimize surveys for these purposes.
Your question selection has the greatest impact on the feedback you’ll receive. To maximize the feedback’s value for accreditation, ensure the questions relate to accreditation standards. Sample questions to use for common accreditation standards include:
Most accreditation bodies include continuous improvement in their standards. To check whether your institution’s commitment to growth is clear from a student perspective, include questions about how your faculty strives to improve their teaching, enhance the curriculum, and respond to student concerns.
Like program development, survey design benefits from diverse perspectives. Engage faculty, student representatives, community members, and other stakeholders in the survey design process. Invite them to suggest questions, expose biases, and propose improvements.
Students are most likely to provide honest and constructive feedback when confident that their anonymity is safe. Develop a confidentiality policy ensuring administrators and faculty will not and cannot access a student’s personal information from their responses. Communicate this commitment to students through written statements and verbal assurances. Course evaluation and survey software can automate confidentiality safeguards.
A larger pool of feedback is more likely to reflect the experience of most students and provide accurate insights. This makes response rates a KPI of how well your evaluation process supports accreditation. Tactics to increase response rates include:
Along with response rates, quality feedback is vital for achieving and maintaining accreditation. To help students provide the information you intend your questions to discover, you need to frame those questions strategically. This could involve:
Record surveys and student responses to document your institution’s conformity to accreditation standards and its commitment to continuous improvement. Reports summarizing survey response data are helpful evidence to include in accreditation self-studies.
One of the best ways of encouraging students to invest time into evaluations is showing them how the feedback drives real changes. Commit to implementing constructive feedback by making the necessary improvements to the curriculum, teaching methods, support resources, and other areas. Then, preface each round of surveys by pointing to tangible improvements that previous evaluations prompted.
Consider having administrators, teaching faculty, student representatives, and other stakeholders meet regularly to review survey questions and the evaluation process. These reviews can explore how well evaluations support accreditation and the desired standards of teaching quality and student success. Commitment to this cycle of evaluation, review, and improvement reflects the institutional growth mindset accreditation bodies look for.
Innovative course evaluation and accreditation software tools can streamline the survey process and help optimize it for supporting accreditation. Look for functions like:
Gathering, analyzing, and implementing course evaluation feedback is a complex process. However, that feedback is a priceless resource for institutions seeking to achieve and maintain accreditation. Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys makes accessing data-driven insights to support accreditation simpler than ever.
This innovative higher education software solution allows administrators and faculty to:
Request your free demo of Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys today.
