Global health freshman Ha Mai takes her time evaluating every professor and teacher's assistant she had this semester. (Photo by Hector Salas Almeida)Many students are running on empty as the semester winds down, but daily course and instructor evaluation reminders are keeping inboxes full.
Shelly Potts, senior director for the University Office of Evaluation and Educational Effectiveness, said a little less than 50 percent of all students completed online evaluation surveys in the spring semester. She said email reminders would hopefully increase this number.
“About 65 percent of graduate students and somewhere around 40 percent of undergraduates completed the online evaluations last semester,” she said. “We would like to see those numbers increase.”
Potts said online evaluations provide more useful information than their written counterparts and are more sustainable, cost-effective and readily available for students because they can be accessed from laptops, tablets or smartphones.
The UOEEE suspects participation percentages from written surveys are higher, but hard numbers are not available because there used to be no way to archive the data.
“Participation might be lower online, but the qualitative data remains the same and the comments are usually richer,” Potts said.
Business management senior Charlie Jontz said he is tired of receiving reminder emails and believes the University should send fewer.
“I hate getting spammed by those emails over and over,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether you do the evaluations or not, you get spammed just the same.”
Jontz said course evaluations are not effective, so he no longer fills them out.
“I used to do them, but the questions don’t get at the real issues, at least not in the courses I have taken,” he said.
Senior Vice Provost Arthur Blakemore, who oversees the UOEEE, said the evaluations are archived and used for many years to assess professors and courses.
He said students who do not participate in the evaluations miss their opportunity to provide feedback that will have an important impact on their professors’ livelihoods.
“Student evaluations are very important at the department level, college level and university level,” he said. “We use them at the time of reviews for promotion and tenure and for renewal of faculty who are on annual contracts.”
Aerospace engineering sophomore Parisa Mardiha said she is annoyed with the number of emails she has received and does not plan on filling out her course evaluations.
“I don’t think professors really care what students have to say,” she said. “I think they just send the emails to make it seem like they care, and I feel like it doesn’t really work.”
Education professor Teresa Foulger said she uses evaluations to measure her course effectiveness and teaching methods.
Foulger is the president of the International Society for Technology in Education, a special interest group for teacher educators. She strives to get a return rate of at least 80 percent because it validates the data and makes it more valuable.
“The evaluations really help me set yearly goals for improvement, and our bosses look at them because they’re used for advancement and even raises,” she said.
She encourages her students to complete the surveys but can only offer so much incentive, she said.
“I always tell my students, ‘They are going to spam your email until it’s done, so you might as well do it,’” she said.
Biological science junior Jennelle Archuleta said she completes all of her evaluations but fears professors don’t examine the responses.
“I pay for my college, and I want good professors and courses,” she said. “I don’t want to just waste my time, so I really hope they actually look into what we say.”
Photography professor Binh Danh, who taught his first classes at ASU this semester, said he is familiar with both online and written evaluations from his time teaching at Stanford and Washington and Lee University.
“I prefer online evaluations because I can see the results much quicker and adjust my courses and teaching accordingly,” he said.
Potts said paper evaluations can take more than a month to process, but the results of online evaluations can be released as soon as grades are posted.
Business communications freshman Jade Florence said she would be much more likely to complete evaluations if they were available after finals and does not appreciate the daily email reminders.
“If they sent one email, I wouldn’t get so annoyed, and maybe I would actually want to do the surveys,” she said.
Potts said the office has received very few complaints about excessive email reminders.
“Once the evaluations are complete, the reminders will stop,” she said.
Complaints, questions and comments regarding course evaluations can be sent to CourseEvals@exchange.asu.edu.
Reach the reporter at npmendo@asu.edu
