After last semester’s online course evaluation pilot test, the faculty evaluation committee reported the study was unsuccessful because of a low student response rate found.Catherine Wehlburg, executive director of the Office for Assessment and Quality Enhancement, said, “A reason we had unsuccessful rates was because over 1,000 evaluations were caught in the TCU spam filters so by the time the e-mails were sent back out, the timing was off due to finals week.”

The online evaluations registered a response rate of 41.34 percent compared to the 75 percent response rate of the paper and pencil Student Perception of Teaching evaluations, otherwise known as SPOT evaluations, Wehlburg said.

The pilot study consisted of 200 course selections instructed by tenured professors. In addition to asking the same questions as the hand-administered evaluation, faculty members added course specific questions to each evaluation.

Wehlburg said she was disappointed in the response rate because the whole idea of evaluations was to modify and enhance courses.

“Even though the response rates were low, that was the whole reason for the test, learning from the outcomes,” said Susan Staples, chair of the faculty evaluation committee.

Many faculty members noticed student evaluations were more honest because students felt they had more privacy filling them out online, Wehlburg said.

Kendal Harlan, a sophomore advertising/public relations major, disagreed.

“I got the evaluation right in the middle of finals, but it was much more convenient for me to fill them out in class as opposed to on my own free time,” Harlan said.

Amber Alston, a junior early childhood education major, said her evaluation sat in her inbox for about a week.

“It was not a long evaluation – it took me two seconds to fill out – but the problem was I had no incentive to do it on my own when I can just fill it out in class,” Alston said.

Wehlburg? said it would be at least a year before online course evaluations are tested again.

“There was not enough positive feedback from the online evaluations,” Wehlburg said. “As for now, we will stick to paper and pencil.