Elizabethtown College will conduct course evaluations in a new way for the fall 2018 semester. Instead of the old paper evaluations, faculty will administer course evaluations between Nov. 19 and Dec. 7 using an online platform through the company CampusLabs.
CampusLabs offers the platform that provides the same IDEA course evaluations seen in the past.
Students will need any electronic device that has Wi-Fi access to complete these evaluations. If a student does not have access to a suitable device, they must email their instructor and studentevals@etown.edu in advance so that accommodations can be made.
To access course evaluations, students can go to https://etown.campuslabs.com/courseeval and sign in using their Etown email and password.
Once the evaluation period opens, hotlinks to each class a student is taking (as long as there are five or more students in the class) will appear after signing in. Faculty can log in using the link https://etown.campuslabs.com/faculty.
Generally, the questions that will be asked are the same, though there have been a few changes made to the questions by the inventory providers to reflect the changes that are happening in higher education today.
Students can read the list of questions in advance at http://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA-CL%20SRI%20Sample%20Instruments/Sample-SRI_diagnostic-2016.pdf.
According to Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development Dr. Kristi Kneas, the main difference of these new evaluations is that Etown is moving away from the paper system to an online platform.
Under this new platform, faculty can customize questions to best fit what they are searching for in feedback. This was possible under the old system as well, though the online platform simplifies this process.
Classes can also be grouped together into “series” with the online platform; for example, all first-year seminars can be part of a series and ask questions specific to the first-year seminar experience or all classes in a department can be grouped together.
The new platform makes mid-semester evaluations possible, as well, though this has not been implemented for the fall 2018 semester.
One important advantage to the online evaluations is how prompt the feedback will be provided to faculty in comparison to the paper system.
“The number one reason [for moving to an electronic platform] is that faculty members weren’t receiving feedback for several months sometimes, and we really want them to be able to have the feedback in a prompt way so they can act on it quickly,” Kneas said.
However, Kneas said that it is important for students to know that faculty still will not be receiving feedback until after grades are submitted, and that their anonymity is protected.
The period of time between when grades are submitted and when faculty receive the feedback from evaluations will simply be much shorter than how it was under the previous system.
Etown students have a response rate somewhere around 90 percent for course evaluations, and, through this new system, Kneas said she hopes the response rate can increase.
“I’m very grateful to students [and faculty] for that because this feedback is really helpful to faculty, and we want to retain that and maybe improve it further,” Kneas said. “This is really unheard of at other institutions.”
She also said that she attributes this to how faculty devotes class time so that students can complete evaluations.
The reason the response rate can increase even further is because if a student happens to miss the class when the evaluations are conducted, they can complete the electronic evaluations at any time during the response window.
Additionally, the online platform will make administering evaluations to winter, May and summer term classes and online classes more consistent than in the past.
Etown maintains its partnership with the nonprofit organization IDEA for course evaluations. IDEA believes students deserve a voice, and the company takes its research into education seriously. Additionally, IDEA provides faculty with resources to improve their teaching and identifies strengths that faculty should work to maintain in future semesters.
With the online system, IDEA more readily provides Etown with an institutional report that allows the College to see its strengths as a whole, as well as identify areas for improvement. This was possible with the old system too, but the new platform makes this easier.
Overall, the online evaluations will make the process of students giving faculty feedback and faculty acting on the feedback more efficient.
“We again want to make sure that students know that we value the feedback; we use the feedback, and their anonymity is protected,” Kneas said.
Any questions about the new system, as well as accommodation requests, can be made to studentevals@etown.edu.
