The Ohio State University

onCampus

• Help
• Buckeye Link
• Map
• Find People
• Webmail
• Search

  Search Ohio State Go

Student evaluations of instruction all move online

Posted on | October 21, 2009 | 229 views |

By Jeff McCallister

In about a month, students here can begin filling out forms to evaluate their fall-quarter instructors. For the first time, all of those forms now will be completed online.

Dick Gunther, a political science professor who has been working on the online Student Evaluation of Instruction issue for several years, made a presentation to University Senate about the system at the Oct. 15 meeting to quell any lingering concerns among faculty.

The SEI results are used for several purposes. The qualititive results — in which students rate several areas on a 1-5 scale — are factored into tenure evaluations. Those cumulative results also are available to students for use in deciding which instructor to take for a given course. Individual faculty use the qualitative results — the answers to the open-ended questions — as a means of self-evaluation to improve their teaching.

Gunther said the online version has several advantages over the paper forms formerly available (data quality, data integrity and security, lower cost, quicker availability and improved sortability of results) and have negligible difference in overall ratings students offer.

“There are a few down sides, such as a short-term decline in the response rate when other universities have moved to all-online forms, and there is a real risk of some skewed data for low-enrollment courses, but the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, especially because they are only in the short term and can be managed.”

Gunther said students’ familiarity with Carmen and the Student Information Service, which will be used to link to the SEI, make it desireable to make the switch now as opposed to a few years ago.

“There are all kinds of instruments already out there that students use to compare their professors, but none of them have the statistically reliable amount of data available with the SEI,” he said.

He pointed specifically to ratemyprofessors.com, which student members of the senate said many students use to learn about professors in advance of taking a course.

“I looked at my own ratings there, and saw that even though I have taught thousands of students, only 24 have rated my work,” he said. “And I must say that I was a little disappointed that my name did not have a little red-hot chili pepper beside it. It’s just a bunch of frivolous nonsense.”

More information is available at sei.osu.edu.

Comments