Electronic Course Evaluations : Does an On-Line Delivery System Bias Student Evaluations?
Student evaluations are used by U.S. universities in virtually all disciplines, with these evaluations often being the most important and sometimes the sole measure of an instructor's teaching ability. In fact, departments of economics have relied almost exclusively on in-class, end-of-term evaluations as the measure of instructional product (Becker & Watts, 1999). The administration of classroom evaluation forms and the subsequent data entry tasks are, however, time-consuming and labor-intensive. An increasing number of academic institutions are considering changing to web-based systems in order to take advantage of the greater efficiencies in this mode of delivery. In considering such a change departments will need to determine whether it will impact mean evaluation scores (particularly for faculty in the midst of the tenure process), response rates (impacting reliability of the data), and result in possible response rate bias. This study was undertaken in an economics-based public policy program at a large research university in the northeastern U.S. The department was considering changing over to electronic course evaluations but was cautious about the impact it might have on the quality of resulting course evaluation data. Study results find that web-based evaluation methods lead to lower response rates, but that lower response rates do not appear to affect mean evaluation scores. They suggest that faculty evaluation scores will not be adversely affected by switching from paper-and-pencil to web-based evaluations
Year of publication: |
2015
|
---|---|
Authors: | Avery, Rosemary J. ; Bryant, W. Keith ; Mathios, Alan D. ; Kang, H ; Bell, Duncan |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Electronic course evaluations : does an online delivery system influence student evaluations?
Avery, Rosemary J., (2006)
-
Electronic Course Evaluations: Does an Online Delivery System Influence Student Evaluations?
Avery, Rosemary J., (2006)
-
Determinants of How Students Evaluate Teachers
Avery, Rosemary J., (2006)
- More ...