Show the Value
Inform students of how course evaluations are used by you and by UC Berkeley. Students may not understand the value of course evaluations. Taking a few minutes to explain – either during the live class session or in a recording – can educate students about how much their voices and perspectives matter. Evidence suggests that appealing to students’ sense of understanding about their role in their educational experience increases course response rates (Dommeyer et. al 2004, Goodman et. al 2015, Johnson 2002, Laubsch 2006, Nulty 2008).
Explain how you use course evaluation data to impact your teaching. Students may not know or understand that course evaluation data can influence students’ future experiences in your course. Briefly explain how you use and value the data they provide to make revisions to future courses. It can be helpful to give students concrete examples of the type of guidance you typically find helpful when you revise courses for future iterations (e.g. “it helps me when students clarify which assignments they found most memorable and useful” or “I appreciate it when students can be specific about which parts of the course they found challenging.”)
Address low response rates openly. Many students may not understand the implications of a low course evaluation response rate in your course. Consider being transparent, explaining how a low response rate on course evaluations for your course can impact the reliability of the course evaluations for assessing the efficacy of the course. The more students that participate in the course evaluation process, the more meaningful the data will be for you to make changes to the course for future students.
Acknowledge “survey fatigue” and express appreciation for their time and effort. Students are evaluating multiple courses all at once and are likely getting inundated with requests. Taking a moment to acknowledge how overwhelming it can feel to get multiple requests at a time may help students feel seen and appreciated.
Build in the Value
Reserve time in-class to complete the online survey, letting students know that they should bring a laptop, tablet, or smartphone with them to class that day. Dedicating 10-15 minutes at the start of the class session to give students time to complete the course evaluation can ensure that students who are in the live class that day have dedicated time set aside to reflect on their experiences that semester. Consider leaving the room for those 10-15 minutes while students complete the evaluation so that students feel motivated to complete the evaluation honestly.
If you cannot reserve in-class time for students to complete the course evaluation, either reserve 2-3 minutes of live class time to show students where they can find the course evaluation OR record a short screencast video showing students where to find the course evaluation portal. Many students may not know where or how to access course evaluations for the course. Taking a few minutes to ensure students know where to find the proper information can improve course evaluation response rates.
Send regular reminders to students about the availability of their course evaluations to complete via bCourses Announcements. A short announcement to remind students that they can complete your course evaluation is a simple and effective way to increase your response rate (Chapman and Joines 2017). Consider crafting a generic announcement that you can schedule to send at a specific point in the semester
Make completing the course evaluation an ungraded assignment in bCourses Assignments. Students often use the “to-do” list feature in bCourses to keep track of work they need to complete for their courses. By creating an ungraded assignment, the task gets added to students’ “to-do” lists without being included in their final grade. As such, students may feel reminded and encouraged to complete the course evaluation.
Value for Value
Consider offering external incentives to compel student evaluation completion. Some instructors may want to provide their students with grade-based incentives to complete course evaluations. For example, some instructors find it a valuable incentive for students to earn an extra credit point if the overall response rate for a course is at an agreed-upon level (e.g. if 75% of students in the course complete the final course evaluations, all students earn a certain number of extra credit points). We encourage some caution with taking this approach, however; the incentive to earn extra credit may inadvertently pressure students into providing more positive evaluations than they might have offered otherwise. Plus, studies have found that externally-driven incentives such as additional points may not be as effective for compelling engagement with effective feedback in the long run than the culture-based recommendations suggested above (Chapman and Joines 2017, Young et. al 2019). While external incentives often do provide a response rate boost, we also encourage the extra credit offering to be negligible enough not to influence the final grade in the course.