The importance of course evaluations in community colleges
Course evaluations have become standard procedures at many community colleges. Those colleges that get the most out of student feedback recognize it as a valuable resource they are investing in through the evaluation process. But gathering and applying high-quality feedback can be difficult, especially when responses are scarce or unclear. If your community college is aiming to overcome these challenges and maximize its return on investment (ROI) from course evaluations, read on.
Why course evaluations matter for community colleges
Improving program quality: Student feedback can highlight improvement opportunities in program curricula, teaching methods, assessment approaches, learning materials, and support resources. Seeking out these improvement opportunities fosters an institutional growth mindset, ensuring programs evolve to meet student needs and keep pace with dynamic job markets.
Enhancing student success: While quantitative data like grades can reveal which students are succeeding and which are struggling, surveys can clarify the reasons. Student feedback provides key perspectives on what is working in the program and where students need more help to realize their potential.
Achieving and maintaining accreditation: Student surveys can help community colleges achieve and maintain accreditation in several ways. They provide evidence of the college’s commitment to continuous improvement while highlighting actionable ways to enhance the program in line with accreditation standards.
Course evaluation challenges for community colleges
Community colleges aiming to leverage their student feedback often run into three challenges:
Response rates: If many students neglect to complete the course evaluation, it becomes unclear how well the data reflects the typical student experience.
Response quality: Even if response rates are high, students sometimes provide vague responses rather than actionable feedback.
Question selection and phrasing: Colleges sometimes miss opportunities to ask the most useful questions or phrase questions in ways students misunderstand.
Adopting course evaluation best practices can help overcome these challenges.
Best practices for community college course evaluations
The results a community college can get from its course evaluation process depend on how effective its methods are for gathering, analyzing, and applying feedback. Best practices for course evaluations include:
Formulating questions based on goals: Rather than using a generic list of questions, set a few goals for each round of evaluations and build the questions around those goals. For example, a goal could be maintaining the program’s accreditation. This may involve demonstrating that the program’s assessments align with its learning objectives. To achieve your goal, ask students how relevant assessments were to the course outcomes, whether the assessment questions reflected what they learned in class, and similar questions.
Leveraging course evaluation software: Course evaluation software can help improve response rates, analyze response data, and compile feedback reports. For example, some innovative software tools may feature AI-powered sentiment analysis to get actionable insights from open-ended responses.
Integrating evaluations with your LMS: Integrating evaluations into your existing LMS infrastructure ensures they are accessible to students and streamlines survey distribution and collection. LMS integration also allows for functions like grade gating to improve response rates.
The real impact of course evaluations for community colleges
Real community colleges like yours have seen significant results from implementing the best practices mentioned in this guide, as these two case studies illustrate.
Bossier Parish Community College
BPCC invested in a course evaluation software system, integrated with its learning management system (LMS), to replace its paper-based student survey system. The college’s average response rates improved from 35 percent to an all-time high of 80 percent as a result. Meanwhile, the transition saved administrators months of work. The Dean of Educational Technology reported that faculty deans could gain insights from the improved evaluation process to enhance student success and retention.
Roanoke-Chowan Community College
Roanoke-Chowan was already using digital surveys, but students found its legacy solution difficult to access and faculty were getting limited insights. Integrating a more innovative evaluation solution into their LMS produced striking results, including:
A seamless integration with the LMS that attracted student attention.
Quick and easy survey customizations that saved valuable time.
Real-time reporting and analytics that generated actionable insights.
Response rates improved from around 30 percent to 83 percent after one semester.
Community college course evaluation questions
The range of questions that could be worth including in a course evaluation is vast. What matters most is having a relevant goal for each question and phrasing it in a way students can understand. Here are a few sample questions and how they can bring valuable insights to light.
1. Did the lectures help you understand the course content?
This question aims to gauge instruction quality. Variations of it could help teaching faculty improve their methods. Beyond the yes/no format, consider presenting this question as:
A Likert scale question: To what extent do you agree that the lectures helped you understand the course content? (Strongly disagree/Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly agree)
An open-ended question: Add a prompt to explain their answer and provide a blank field. This could elicit constructive feedback about specific ways the lecture content or delivery can improve.
2. Did the assessments line up with the lecture content?
This question aims to check that lectures prepare students for assessments and that assessments are cohesive with the curriculum. If students report a misalignment, either the teaching material or assessment questions should change to better serve the course learning outcomes. Provide space for students to explain what misalignments they experienced, if any.
3. Did you understand the course objectives from the first session?
This could be a yes/no question or a Likert scale question asking students to state how well they understood the objectives. If data indicates that many students had a poor understanding, teaching faculty should revisit how they present these objectives to ensure students know what knowledge and skills they are pursuing from day one.
4. Were you able to access all the support resources you needed?
Student support resources are vital to student success and engagement, as well as program accreditation. Consider framing this as an open-ended question, prompting students to share what necessary resources, if any, they found lacking from the program. You could also craft a ranking question, asking students to organize support resources in order of importance from a list of options, like:
Mental health counselling
Disability services
Writing and translation services
Academic and career advice
Tutoring services
Financial aid
Health services
The responses can help faculty evaluate whether students have the resources they find most important or not.
Enhance learning with Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys
Community colleges have gained deeper insights and improved response rates by investing in their course evaluation process. One proven way to do this is by implementing Course Evaluations & Surveys. This innovative software solution can help your college:
Access data-driven insights through data synthesis, comparison, and AI sentiment analysis.
Integrate surveys into your LMS within minutes for a straightforward student experience.
Boost response rates by up to 70 percent with enhanced accessibility, automated reminders, and optional grade gating.
Try a free demo of Watermark today to discover how it could help your community college succeed.
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