Wednesday, January 9, 2002

Web-Based Evaluations Let Instructors Poll Their Students Anonymously By JANICE PASKEY An instructor at Mount Royal College has developed a free software program available to instructors who want confidential teaching evaluations from their students. Bruce Ravelli, an instructor of sociology, developed the program two years ago with the designer Zvjezdan Patz. It is known as the Free Assessment Summary Tool, or FAST. Mr. Ravelli says the program has 550 users worldwide, and he has presented two studies on its use. "I didn't find end-of-course evaluations very useful," says Mr. Ravelli, who teaches nine one-semester courses each year at Mount Royal, in Calgary, Alberta. He wanted confidential course feedback, and developed FAST to allow professors to ask up to 20 questions and have anonymous answers sent to them immediately, in spreadsheet form. In Mr. Ravelli's case, he uses the software program to gather three sets of comments -- one about the course requirements, one after the midterm exam, and the last after the course has ended. Although his institution subscribes to Blackboard Inc., which provides software to professors who want to design similar programs, Mr. Ravelli sees FAST's advantages in its guarantee of anonymity, its offering results in a spreadsheet format, and its being free. He believes a free program has more clout: "If someone is making money, then I think in the academic community there isn't as much credibility." Outside of Mount Royal College, the largest number of users are at Lynchburg College, in Virginia, which requires its professors to conduct midterm evaluations for every course. Richard Seymann, director of academic assessment at Lynchburg, says he encourages faculty members there to use FAST. "The FAST system is efficient and provides an instructor with immediate results. In past years, where we used scan sheets, we not only had to wait for computer-center turnaround, but it was less efficient for obtaining students' open-ended comments," Mr. Seymann says in an e-mail message. Bill Noel, assistant professor of communication studies at Lynchburg, says he values creating his own questions and receiving instant feedback. One problem, however, is that the number of student responses is low. "It is hard to get them to do the survey," he says. Cindy Kenkel, an instructor in management at Northwest Missouri State University, agrees that response rates can be low. "If I sense a class is not going as well as I hope, I will assign this as a class project. I've said, 'If 75 percent of the class logs in and provides suggestions, I'll award five points for the entire class,'" she says via e-mail. Ms. Kenkel says that FAST has enabled her to make changes midcourse, and that using it indicates to students that she's open to their comments. One of Mr. Ravelli's own studies, "Anonymous Online Teaching Assessments: Preliminary Findings," shows that students like the anonymity of FAST and find it easy to use, but they worry about computer access, and have trouble remembering the necessary passwords. The study was published by the Educational Resources Information Center. He has recently simplified the usage of FAST. Any instructor can now use the site, and students can find their instructor's assessment right from the FAST home page. FAST resides on its own server and does not require any hardware or administrative support from the user. It works with all Web browsers in both Mac and PC formats. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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