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Course Evaluations: More Carrot, Less Stick

I appreciated the candid emails from BB yesterday and today about course evaluations. He reasserted Boalt's dismay that since the school switched to an online system, "the return rate has been slowly dwindling," and he explained how the school has responded.

First, data will only be viewable by students who completed an evaluation the previous semester. (I'm willing to bet there is a giant exception for fall semester 1L's, so if you're lazy, that's who you should coerce. It shouldn't be hard.) BB explains that the school favors this scheme because it has generated a 90% response rate at Northwestern, perhaps because it has a "certain symmetry." It seems at least as likely to me that the high response rate at Northwestern is partly because it's so damn cold and miserable there that students have nothing better to do, but that's pure speculation.

Second, the school will begin releasing all quantitative data for all classes, with the exception of junior professors (but not junior lecturers - yet another short straw to the hard working folks in the Skills Program, no?)

Third, Boalt will begin offering a bigger carrot. Students who complete timely evaluations will be entered into some sort of Amazon.com raffle.  See the email in the comments.

Finally, the school is "still discussing" whether to release the written comments from the evaluations. This is, in my opinion, the key to the whole shebang. I understand that there is a California labor law problem with mandatory release of the written responses, but I continue to believe that if that information were released the response rate would skyrocket. No doubt Armen will chime in with lush and nostalgic praise for the system at UCLA, and with good reason: communication is a two way street here, and until we get the sense that WE can benefit from our input, assertions that the school "takes them quite seriously" continue to feel rather empty. I realize the labor law may pose a bit of a stumbling block, but I continue to have faith that if the school wants to, it can someday find a way around it. Where there is a will, there's surely a way, right? I probably shouldn't go there but, think: Prop 209.

Oh yeah, and click here to complete your evaluation.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on April 20, 2009 (boomark / email).