Nearly all processes for online evaluation of courses struggle with student response rates.  Low response rates raise questions about the validity of the data, because there is no way of knowing how representative the students who completed the form are.

Faculty need valid information about their courses in order to improve their teaching. What students say about their learning experience matters, since they are the only ones able to observe all that happens in a course. The higher the response rate, the more confident faculty can be in making changes to improve student learning.

Course Evaluation Calendar

Course evaluation dates are based on the following guidelines:

• The window is based on the last class meeting (WEC/Grad/Rochester) or the last day of finals (Day) as listed in Records and Registration.
• End-of-term courses will have evaluations run at least 2 weeks starting on a Monday when possible.  When they close at the end of finals that results in a 3 week evaluation period.
• Courses ending before the end of term will have evaluations run in a 10-day window running from Monday to the next Wednesday with the course ending in the first 7 days of the 10-day window. For example, a course ending on a Tuesday will have its evaluation run from Monday through the following Wednesday.
• Evaluations run until midnight of the closing day.
• During the summer, evaluations are running nearly every week starting on Monday and ending Wednesday of the following week. Any course that has ended within the first 7 days of the window will be included in the evaluation group.

Evaluation results will be available after the grade due date for the term has passed even if grades are turned in early.

Student notification

Students are notified by email, up to three times, that they have course evaluations to complete.  The front page of Moodle also shows students which course evaluations they need to complete.

Communication Strategies

Over the years several communication strategies have been used to increase response rates though none produced greatly increased response rates.

• Advertising on the Inside Augsburg page.
• Advertising on the digital signs around campus.
• Advertising using posters created by students in a summer graphic design course.
• More frequent email reminders.

Response Rate History

This table shows the historic response rates by term.