The Office of eLearning is excited to announce that course evaluations for courses for all parts of term ending in December have been deployed using our newly-acquired Qualtrics QClassroom course evaluation survey tool.
Please see the following to know when your evaluations for your course(s) will close:
2nd 9 Week: Close on Dec 13 at 5pm
2nd 7 Week: Close on Dec 15 at 5pm
3rd 5 Week: Close on Dec 15 at 5pm
Full Term: Close on Dec 15 at 5pm
This is a continuation of the service to campus providing course evaluations to all participating courses using Blackboard’s native Enterprise Surveys tool as a COVID-19 pandemic response. Questions used this fall were pulled from the department question templates used in previous terms. There were some departments we had not worked with previously, so we obtained questions from their chairs.
Academic Department Input on Course Evaluation Questions
The staff at eLearning worked with each academic unit to create department-specific questions for the course evaluations that were issued from the Enterprise Survey tool previously used to provide surveys to all courses as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For departments not wanting specific questions, eLearning worked with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee during the start of the pandemic to obtain generic questions.
The surveys used for the evaluations distributed through Qualtrics are an exact copy of what had been previously issued, unless adjustments had been requested by the department chair prior to the opening of the evaluation period.
How will students access their course evaluations?
You can find more information on the Blackboard Student Support website about how students access and submit the evaluation survey.
Reminders to Students
Email notifications are sent to students at the beginning of each evaluation period, and students who have not completed the evaluation within three business days prior to the due date will be automatically sent another email reminding the evaluation.
Faculty are encouraged to remind their students that course evaluations are available to be completed as an additional method of increasing the response rate.
Faculty teaching face-to-face classes can also encourage students to complete their course evaluation during class using their mobile phone.
Please note that for some students, the emails re: course evaluations might go to the students’ spam folder, so a reminder to check that folder is helpful.
eLearning has created a subcommittee within the university’s Online Campus Advisory Board (a body with representatives from each academic college) to continually address methods of improving response rates for course evaluations administered online.
How will I access the results?
In the past, eLearning was only able to logistically provide results to department chairs, and those chairs (or administrative assistants) would be responsible for dissemination to individual faculty. The UA Little Rock QClassroom survey tool provides greater access to completed course evaluations allowing direct dashboard access to survey results. Based on the increased capabilities of the QClassroom tool, eLearning will not provide results directly to campus; the dashboard will be the sole point of access.
You can find more information about accessing results on the eLearning website.
Why did UA Little Rock centralize all university course evaluations within eLearning moving forward and what benefit will Qualtrics QClassroom bring to our university?
eLearning can manage this process for all of Academic Affairs as an official office function, centralizing the importance of course evaluations in one place.
Each academic department/school will be able to personalize the course evaluation questions for their department/school.
Centralization of the course evaluation process eliminates any departmental/college costs for conducting their own course evaluations (i.e. staff, scantron sheets, etc.) and reduces instances where a course is not covered based on error (e.g. adjunct not knowing to do them).
Centralization speeds up the time for academic departments to have access to course evaluation results; an important reality, especially at the start of each spring semester for annual reviews.
Here is an article from IT Services about this collaborative process to centralize course evaluations.
If you have any questions about evaluations for your course, please contact us at courseevaluations@ualr.edu.
