Strategies for Instructors to Increase Course/Instruction Evaluations Response Rates

Recent research on course evaluation systems offers several suggestions for raising student response rates. To encourage your students to participate or to provide constructive feedback in the Course/Instruction surveys, consider trying some of the following strategies. 

• Provoke the thought of student evaluations and their importance.
  A few days before the evaluation period begins, have students think about the course evaluations. Encourage them to look at the syllabus, specifically, the course objectives, to see what the syllabus said the course will be about and what actually happened in the class. This is especially important for instructors teaching courses that serve first-year students who may be less familiar with the evaluation process. Evaluations are usually sent 18 days before their course ends.
• Encourage all students to participate.
  Students who like the course or have no issues with the course may not think it is necessary to complete the evaluations.
• Provide assurance that you will use their feedback.
  Many students do not know how their feedback will be used. Assure them that you care about improving your teaching, help them understand what kind of feedback is most useful, and provide specific examples of how you have used feedback in the past. Some studies show that this is the single biggest influence on whether students will complete course evaluations. 
• Provide frequent reminders. 
  Remind students frequently in class and online about evaluation instructions and completion dates. SEI/C links are available for 30 days after they receive the evaluation link.
• Remind them about the source of finding the links to the evaluations. 
  Remind students that evaluation links can be found in their academic email accounts sent by RRCSurveys@rrc.ca and/or in the RRC Polytech Surveys widget in the LEARN shell.
• Provide time in class to complete the evaluation. 
  Students are more motivated to complete a course evaluation when given time during the regular class period to do so. Alert students ahead of this activity and ask them to bring a laptop or phone to class if possible. 
• Provide assurance of confidentiality. 
  Many students may be fearful that their responses can be identified. Assure them that instructors have no way of linking responses to individual students and will not see the responses until after grades have been submitted.

When students feel they are our partners in improving teaching, they may feel more motivated to provide the type of feedback that is crucial to our development as instructors. As you wrap up the semester, remember to set up an environment in your course that encourages substantive, helpful, and timely feedback.

References

Adams, C.L. (2012). Online measures of student evaluations of instruction. In M. E. Kite (Ed.), Effective evaluation of teaching: A guide for faculty and administrators. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site.

Hoel, A., & Dahl, T.I.  (2018). Why bother? Student motivation to participate in student evaluations of teaching. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2018.1511969.

Nulty, D. D. (2008). The adequacy of response rates to online and paper surveys: What can be done? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(3, June), 301–314.

Steiner, H. (2018). Increasing Course Evaluation Response Rates: Tips for Instructors.