The Problem and the Approach For at least a decade, Saint Michael's has asked all students in all classes to fill out paper class evaluation forms that are provided by a vendor and then returned to that vendor for processing off-site. Although out-sourcing the job has advantages, two disadvantages are that all classes fill out the same form, the one that is given to all of the vendor's customers, and that the time to get the results back is long, about six months. Instructors object to both of these, saying that they reduce the value of the information as feedback for continuous improvement and instead make it more like a grade for the class from the students. In a new system under trial at Saint Michael's, students use a web browser to fill out a form for each class. The forms differ from class to class, except for four questions that are common to all classes, which are useful for comparisons.
Students say that the forms are easy and intuitive.
The core of the project is that the instructors compose the forms. So an instructor in a class without a laboratory simply does not include the question asking students about the lab, and an instructor who tries something new can include a question targeted at this innovation. After picking the class and section from a list, the instructor chooses a list of questions for the students in that class. This choice is from about two dozen preprepared questions, and also from ones that the instructor may compose. For each chosen question, the instructor clicks to include either a Likert component or an open-ended component, or both.