Another course evaluation response rate study

I’ve added a new resource to my annotated bibliography on online course evaluations.

Norris, J., Conn, C. (2005). “Investigating strategies for increasing student response rates to online-delivered course evaluations.� Quarterly Review of Distance Education 2005; 6 (1) p13-32 (ProQuest document ID 975834871).
This paper reports the findings of 2 studies done at Northern Arizona State University. The first study looked at historic data from 2000-2002 to examine student responses to online course evaluations in 1108 course sections. This group had an average response rate of 31%. A follow-up questionnaire was sent to 50 faculty in the group to explore what strategies improved response rate. These results informed the second study on 39 online course sections and 21 sections of a required freshman face-to-face course. The second study used some basic strategies (no penalty strategies) in the implementation of the online course evaluations: 2 weeks before the end of the course the URL to evaluation was posted in the course management system, an announcement containing a statement of course evaluation value and due date was sent in a method appropriate to the class (email, online syllabus or discussion board), and a reminder email was sent 1 week before the class ended containing the URL and due date. The 39 online course sections averaged a 74% response rate and the 21 face-to-face courses averaged a 67% response rate. In addition, 11 sections of the face-to-face course used paper evaluations and received a 83% response rate. These suggestions are very similar to the emerging findings from the TLT Group’s BeTA project.

2 Responses to “Another course evaluation response rate study”

1. sean lancaster says:

   April 26, 2006 at 12:08 am

   i just received the results of my two online classes this semester and i was around 90% response rate in both classes. maybe i should market my secret. ;~)

   ED 205 L – EOT EVAL (Lancaster) Y End of Term Ev 20/ 23 87.0% 0
   ED 205 R – EOT EVAL (Lancaster) Y End of Term Ev 21/ 23 91.3% 0

   fwiw, i begged my students to do it.

2. Trudy says:

   January 31, 2008 at 4:04 pm

   I’m so surprised that your blog exists! I was just searching for information about response rate of course evaluations…

   Anyway, I wanted to know whether our 30 something percent is normal and whether there are strategies we could employ without making it a requirement for grades.

   But thanks so much for creating the bibliogrphy list!!