Course Evaluation Tool

Owned by Kirk Alexander
Last updated: Feb 02, 2009Version comment

We can collect here information related to the implementation of the course evaluation tool

The Jira starting this dialog is SAK-2434  TRC documents have been uploaded there

Attachments now include comments on administering evaluations as done at the School of Ed along with their standard questions.
Also included there are sample XML files used by UMich to upload assignments for each course site and to assign them to those sites

Things we want to consider implementing here

  • Some form of the course hierarchy to make assigning an evaluation at the school or department level as simple as possible
  • Possible export to My Info Vault format (needs to be explored; School of Ed has done this)
  • A set of templates that the faculty support team may produce to make finding good sets of questions easier and to capture fixed sets of questions for use by departments such as the School of Ed does now.

Other issues to consider

  • Reporting and access needs at UCD and how the OOTB tool meets or doesn't meet those needs.
  • Archiving over time
  • Access to past evaluations

 Useful links

Some links to literature on the reliability and validity of online course evaluations and comparisons to traditional paper evaluations

Communications

We need to build a list of questions to ask the faculty/departments that have expressed interest in a SmartSite course evaluation system to help us figure out how to configure it and what kind of training/support will be needed and when.   Here is the list I started when contacting the school of education:

  • the kinds of reports that can be generated
  • who needs to or is allowed to view reports
  • is the evaluation always sent to every class in the department
  • are the classes that take the evaluation all in Banner
  • Do you need to provide evaluations for ad-hoc groups of users?
  • how/where are the evaluations stored over time
  • do the results need to be downloaded in any way / saved to spreadsheet?
  • who activates the evaluation each quarter and when?
  • how long are the evaluations open?
  • does your system send email reminders to students
  • do you have the students take the evaluations in a computer lab?
  • how long a response will your system accept for the free answer questions?
  • is export for campus merit review desired/required?

Current Communications Plan:

  • Go over the functionality and user interfaces that are available and get recommendations in terms of their perspectives on campus needs from:
    • IETLC
    • The SmartSite Oversight Committee
    • The Ed Tech SubCommittee for CCFIT
    • The Senate CIT
  • Present the recommendations of these three committees to the CCFIT and Pete for ratification
  • Provide status reports to the SmartSite Oversight Committee monthly during the implementation, test and pilot phases
  • Demonstrate the tool to the four committees once it is ready for piloting (and possibly others such as the TIF, DTC, and TSP)
  • Report to the four committees on the results of the pilot and to announce the launch to the campus (including a statement from the Senate, if requested, regarding the use of this tool)

Other people to contact for input regarding implementation logistics/details and for pilot candidates (currently tracked in Google Docs Faculty Tracking Spreadsheet:

  • Andrew Ishida, Neurology/Physiology  atishida@ucdavis.edu (also Greg Loge ggloge@ucdavis.edu)
  • Amber Carrere MPH acarrere@ucdavis.edu
  • Tor Cross, vlcross@ucdavis.edu Psychology
  • Pam Davis (ptdavis@ucdavis.edu) / Shawn DeArmond (sgdearmond@ucdavis.edu) School of Education
  • Lori Lubin (lmlubin@ucdavis.edu) Physics
  • Kerry Hasa / Janet Brown-Simmons, ADMAN (on SmartSite Oversight Committee)
  • Roger McDonald (rbmcdonald@ucdavis.edu) and other members of the Course Evaluations working group

Technical Contacts (responses received from Steve Faith's original inquiry)

  • Aaron Zeckoski<aaron.zeckoski@vt.edu> , (Cambridge)
  • Sean DeMonner <demonner@umich.edu> and "Ellis, Richard" <rwellis@umich.edu> (received tech infro from Dick)
  • Ellen Yu Borkowski, University of Maryland <eyb@umd.edu>(awaiting direct programmer input)
  • stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za University of Capetown

Evaluation Questions

The Sakai Evaluation System tool comes with a series of categorized questions in a pool which can be included in any evaluation built within the user interface associated with the tool.  In addition, individuals can add their own sets of questions and build templates for evaluations to be given to different groups or classes.  To understand the range of questions needed at UCD we have collected several documents in the attachments section of this page.  Of particular interest is the file containing the questions currently in use in the School of Education's online evaluation system built by Shawn DeArmond (School of Education Eval Questions.doc) and the TRC common list of faculty evaluation questions (TRC_A.doc).