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Response Rates
Survey results become more useful as the rate of response from those surveyed increases. Higher response rates generally mean that results come from a more representative group of students. While online response rates are often lower than paper-based classroom evaluations, there is some evidence that students choosing to answer online evaluations provide more meaningful comment than those who are forced to answer paper-based evaluations in class.
Developing an Online Evaluation Culture
During 2007, QUT is seeking to develop an online evaluation culture in which a high proportion of students wish to give feedback because they see that their feedback helps strengthen units and teaching. As improvements emerge and are directly communicated to students, the benefit of participating online should become evident and contribute to a pattern of ongoing student participation. The challenges for QUT in 2007 will be to achieve as high a response as possible in an environment that is fully online for the first time and to best use feedback in units where response rates are very low.
Strategies for increasing engagement with student evaluations
Communicating with students about how past evaluation data has been used to improve the quality of teaching and learning has been shown to be the most important factor in increasing survey response rates. Therefore the most important thing you can do to ensure student engagement in evaluation surveys is to let students know at the beginning of semester how you have valued and responded to feedback from previous students and how you will seek and use feedback from the current cohort. Other suggested strategies for increasing response rates are included in the Increasing Online Response Rates: Ideas for your Unit section.
Multiple Sources of Feedback on Units and Teaching
A leading principle of the QUT evaluation policy is that multiple sources of data should be used to inform teaching and learning practice. Therefore, along with online student evaluation surveys, academic staff should consider how complementary approaches to evaluation such as One-minute papers, customised surveys, focus group discussions, peer reviews etc. may increase their communication with students about what helps them learn. Information and ideas about supplementary approaches to the evaluation of teaching and learning are also available.
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