When Innovation Fails: Methods for Collection of Student Feedback

Thurs 9th October, 11:20pm

Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) feedback has demonstrated utility for students, faculty and management. With recent advances in computer technologies, SET surveys are increasingly being delivered online. Online delivery reduces cost and administrative load, and increases the flexibility of access. Unfortunately, online delivery is frequently associated with a sharp drop in response rates relative to traditional in-class, paper-based delivery. Our experiences with online SET delivery have followed this pattern, although the reasons usually proposed for the effect might not be expected to apply to Information Technology students. In this paper, we describe a study directly comparing response rates using the two delivery modalities, which showed a dramatic advantage for paper-based delivery. We discuss the likely causes for this result and methods for improving online response rates in IT departments.

About Joy Gasson

Joy Gasson teaches mathematics and programming in the Bachelor of Information Technology programme at Otago Polytechnic. She has also worked as a secondary school teacher, curriculum facilitator and commercial programmer. Her research interests are centred on informing and expanding her teaching practice.