Online course evaluations offer a number of advantages over the traditional paper based surveys that are handed out at the end of the semester for students to provide feedback about the course and the instructor. However, low response rates to online course evaluations have kept the method from being widely adopted. Additionally, concerns about a perceived lack of quality of student feedback have led to resistance against course evaluations, especially when the results are used to make decisions about promotion and tenure. The present study aimed at addressing the issue of low response rates and low quality of feedback by means of targeted instructional interventions. The sixteen sections of a large enrollment (N = 484), lower division course at a southeastern public research I university were randomly assigned to three groups. One group received an intervention that highlighted the benefits of course evaluations and aimed at motivating students to participate in end-of-term online course evaluations. A second intervention aimed at teaching students how to provide effective feedback in online course evaluations. A third group that did not receive any intervention served as the control for the study. The results showed that the intervention aimed at increasing participation did not have the predicted effect. On the other hand, the intervention teaching students how to provide effective feedback yielded significantly higher comment rates. The quality of the comments as measured by the length of comments in words, whether or not the comments included examples from class, suggestions for improvement, or personal comments about the instructor, did not differ among groups. For future research it is suggested to vary instructor and course properties and use media based interventions for scalability. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / April 25, 2011. / Course Evaluations, Student Evaluations of Teaching, Student Feedback, Quality of Feedback, Response Rates / Includes bibliographical references. / Vanessa Dennen, Professor Directing Dissertation; John Geringer, University Representative; John Keller, Committee Member; Robert Reiser, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_253899 |
| Contributors | Wise, Jean-Marc (authoraut), Dennen, Vanessa (professor directing dissertation), Geringer, John (university representative), Keller, John (committee member), Reiser, Robert (committee member), Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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