Improve the student experience with simplified course evaluations

As the second school year during the pandemic wraps up, students are reassessing the value of higher ed with overall enrollment down 5% since 2019, and institutions are taking stock of the experiences they offer students.

Today’s dynamic learning environment, which includes virtual and hybrid classrooms where teachers get less direct feedback, demands a flexible and automated way to gather and analyze insights from course evaluation

That’s why we’ve launched Course Evaluations, a solution that helps schools improve teaching, student engagement and retention by putting real-time feedback into a dashboard that links insights to plans for action.

It’s the only unified solution to manage the entire evaluations process – from customizing questions to analyzing results on an institutional, department and professor-level – Qualtrics Course Evaluations reimagines the traditional end-of-course evaluation process to meet the needs of students today.

As the second school year during the pandemic wraps up, students are reassessing the value of higher ed with overall enrollment down 5% since 2019, and institutions are taking stock of the experiences they offer students. Today’s dynamic learning environment, which includes virtual and hybrid classrooms where teachers get less direct feedback, demands a flexible and automated way to gather and analyze insights from course evaluations.

Qualtrics Course Evaluations simplifies the process with easily customizable evaluations that students can respond to via email or a learning management system. Automated distribution saves school administrators time, along with automatic reminders to increase response rates. And results are available immediately rather than months after a course has concluded — meaning it’s possible to collect feedback mid-course and address problems as they arise.

Engaging students in remote and hybrid classrooms

Until 2020, William Paterson University in New Jersey was still using pen and paper surveys, with multiple different question sets for each department, further segmented by the professor’s tenure, which made analysis difficult. Qualtrics Course Evaluations provides William Paterson University with one easy-to-use platform for sending students invitations and reminders to complete a common evaluation, tracking response rates, exploring and analyzing results, linking outcomes to plans to improve teaching and learning and tracking progress over time.

“With a hybrid or fully remote format, sometimes our students feel distant, like they can’t openly engage. Whereas in the classroom, you can tell if a student is lost just by looking at them,” says Tony Krucinski, Department Coordinator for Instruction and Research Technology at William Paterson University. “We’re seeing a lot more students providing open-ended responses because they can submit evaluations digitally via their cell phones, laptops or tablets.”

From evaluations conducted during the pandemic, William Paterson University found that students wanted more communication from teachers, who were accustomed to having students connect with them in person.

As a result, professors quickly adapted to meet students where they were, making themselves available via Zoom and hosting virtual office hours where students could connect informally or ask questions. Krucinski said that giving faculty actionable feedback through the easy production of summary reports helps them make improvements to their teaching. A great classroom experience can make all the difference for students who may be at risk of dropping out.

“Schools are still adapting to the seismic changes of the pandemic. Their task now is to dial in to the experiences students are having — in and out of the classroom — that will keep them engaged in learning,” says Omar Garriott, Global Head of Education at Qualtrics. “Students demand it. Waiting weeks or months to collect course and instructor feedback is a thing of the past. Qualtrics helps schools understand and take action on what students are saying more often as we all push forward into a new normal of teaching and learning.”