CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY
ONLINE COURSE EVALUATION TEAM
Date and Location: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
President’s Conference Room
Time:
Attendees:
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Jillian Benson, Julius Bianchi, Karissa Faulconer, Bruce Gillies, Herb Gooch, Halyna
Kornuta, Melinda Wright
Regrets:
Cathy Alexander, Patrick Schmidt, Maria Kohnke, Ron Hagler, Michael Graham,
Edward Julius, Myungsook Klassen, Sean Kreychik
MINUTES
A. Pilot Review and Discussion
1. Response rates and comparisons
a. Karissa showed charts that were posted on the Assessment website of the
percentages of returns and responses.
2. Faculty/director feedback
a. Survey in process
b. One item was to respond to the edited comments
i. Bruce said his faculty would prefer un-edited comments
ii. Jillian mentioned edited comments because of a past event
c. Karissa is sending out a reminder email today (10/15/08) for the faculty to complete
the survey
3. Student Responses
a. New link on the Assessment website
4. Student technical concerns
a. Were sent out to Sean, Patrick and Michael to attend to.
i. Halyna may have to meet with them separately to go over those.
B. CourseEval contract
a. Think about cost and compare
i. Don’t have much to compare to
1. A few thousand each semester just to pay for printing. That does not
include reams of paper for running reports or pay for workers to stuff and
enter the data.
ii. We should put a high value on CoursEval because of the quick turn-around
iii. Julius: set up is 7500, 2400 hosted, annual for software=6000, 2400 hosting, first
year is 9900
1. CoursEval is for unlimited surveys\evaluations
iv. Herb asked if it would make sense to develop this “in house” Julius disagrees
v. Over the summer we were given a pilot for free
vi. Sean=involvement will be minimal now that he has made sure the system works
with LDAP.
vii. Patrick: will be working with Provost to make sure the data is cleaned up. Karissa
said working with him on this has been smoother than over the summer
1.
Difficulty with 15 week courses will be with the cross-listed classes
a. AA Will meet with Maria to find out what to do with these courses
b. Support from Academic Affairs
i. Julius asked about the work load compared to paper and pencil
1. Jillian mentioned how they are still getting calls about past evaluations and
why they were not received
2. A few log in troubles but did not hear from very many faculty about this.
Karissa thinks Julius’ slides helped.
ii. Karissa: emails are already done, just need to change the dates.
iii. Halyna: need to work on the wording over time. Can cut back, the only ones who
would need the wordy emails would be the freshmen or new students.
1. Karissa mentioned Julius making a video for students like the faculty one
c. Big concern: response rate
i. Set up labs
1. Set up old computers in labs temporarily so students can complete
2. Faculty want some level of control
a. Example: Students taking the evaluations at the same time and
place like they do with the paper and pencil evaluations
b. Halyna has heard that some students have held group discussions
about what to put on evaluations
i. Can be standardized and positive
ii. Although, sometimes in this situation students are
“influenced” by the negative people and tend to write
negative comments
iii. Halyna thinks it would be a great research project. Ex:
positive to negative comments
ii. Herb suggested that the response rate might go down if they are doing them on
their own opposed to as a group
iii. Another thought is that the students filling out evaluations on own are going to be
motivated to do it because they have negative comments to say
1. Jillian thinks it will bring more positive comments if she is doing it on her
own
iv. Herb: key is instructors
1. Need to get them to help, especially adjunct
a. Problem: Adjunct do not always use their CLU email
2. Julius mentioned adding something to their contract that explains the
evaluations
a. Problem is with a time gap from beginning of semester when they
get contract to the end of the semester when the evaluations go
out
3. Suggestions to get faculty involved
a. Talk about at a faculty\chair meetings
b. Faculty forum
i. Address issues
c. Herb: Encourage faculty to put something on the web (example:
WebCT, ERES) that goes to the survey
d. Add in syllabi
i. Academic Affairs created a syllabus template for CoursEval
1. Academic Affairs is going to send it to Bruce
v. Students feel that no one looks at evaluations
1. Herb: Go to Echo and have them make an article about CoursEval
2. Really need to get communication out there
3. Get student council involved
4. RA events
vi. Difficulty: can’t withhold grades or anything like that
C. Team Recommendation to Provost
a. Leanne has been informed, need to have an official approval
i. Recommendation to move forward with CoursEval: Yes
1. Consensus was to move forward (everyone at meeting said yes)
D. Future Projects
a. Has unlimited survey capabilities
b. Look at procedure to use
i. Example: Flashlight
1. Has a procedure and people on campus who can help
2. Students use a lot
3. Jillian thinks we should keep Flashlight
c. Does CoursEval have the option for people to only see their department?
i. Example: when you log on to Flashlight you can only see what you have access for.
d. Faculty: interested to look at questions for ART
e. Change one question at a time to ease students and faculty in to the changes
f. For the pilot questions were added that questioned the process of online evaluations. This
could be done for the departments too.
g. Would be worthwhile to see how other people\institutions use CoursEval to their benefit
h. Another conversation for ART (Herb) and TLC (Julius): can we take out older data and
import to CoursEval.
i. Example: Program Review
i. What about courses with less than 5 students?
i. Right now classes with less than 5 do not get evaluated
1. Example: music, practicum
E. Next Meeting Agenda