I'm working on a project to rewrite the CSC course evaluation system which is currently a series of PHP, shell scripts, perl, and posgres C code.

The surveys are currently anonymous. To you as students, would you be willing to put an ID number or name (not necessarily your student ID) on surveys you fill out if it were guaranteed to you by mandate that professors would not be allowed access to see what a specific student rated them? And certainly not allowed access to see their average ratings until after grades were released? If there were an optional student identifier spot on your survey, would you fill it in? If it were an ID you could just make up; would you use the same one every time if you knew it would be of benefit?

This would allow me to vary weight of surveys you take based on previous surveys you've taken. So if you historically consistently rate professors as "Somewhat agree" or "Somewhat disagree", then when you rate a professor "Strongly Agree" that s/he is good or "Strongly disagree" (and think the prof sucks), then this would carry more pull than someone who has only ever rated professors "Strongly disagree" and generally hates school.

Also, this could POSSIBLY help in determining learning trends... if it were found that one group consistently rates one group of professors high and another group low; and another group consistently rates the first group low and the second group high... then for future students we could recommend that if they really like prof A or really hate prof A for 116, then chances are they'll either hate or like prof B for 216.

The possibilities are boundless... but it's contingent on if you as a student would trust that your survey were anonymous.

2/15/2006 2:14:10 PM

this has been needed for a long time - so this assumes you are going to allow students full access to the filled out evals - is that acceptable by the department?

only in very rare cases have evaluations ever been used to make a decision on a professor - Athavale would be the most recent I can think of - maybe Dutta isn't allowed to teach csc401 anymore

with systems like this - you just present it and tell people it's anonymous (assuming in actuality it is) - proof to back it up would help for the students that are jackasses and believe the system is out to get them - they will be the exception

2/15/2006 2:20:20 PM

if they just made up an id, someone else could be using that same id.

2/15/2006 2:29:03 PM

From some minor experience, evaluation forms themselves are extremely subjective and difficult as hell to properly analyze. You can track trends from the information on the eval forms, but that really isn't helpful. You'll need to collect a shitton of additional information about the students (GPA, Major GPA, SAT Math, etc. to name a few ) to learn anything interesting. You'll most likely need consent forms for each individual student in that scenario ... good luck with that.

As far as the actual eval forms, if possible, I'd used WRAP as their login ID. Then have a "I understand page" where they have to agree and click next, then the actual eval forms. As far as separating the two, I'd believe it. Its not hard to mask an ID field within a database when passing off sensitive data to somebody else.

2/15/2006 7:39:26 PM

why not just have a system that allows people to choose whether or not to include their personal identifier. that way those who have issues don't need to do it and their response are still included

2/15/2006 10:08:54 PM

Regardless of what you do make sure it requires that the student be in the class at the time of the review. This can be done using the current NCSU login systems. You'll have to communicate with them about this.

Once that is setup you can put a disclaimer prior to your login or on your login screen that says what information will be entered into the form. There is no need to put an ID as you can log that students UID in the system ONLY as a reference and never to be displayed to anyone.

This uid can verify that the student is indeed in that class, and that they cannot double post etc. It can also link that student to other questionaires. Using this method you can obtain a plethora of information.

However a second way, which is less useful overall but sufficient for your method is requiring the Student's NCSU email. Again... this would be private to both teachers and student viewers of this information and would only be used for tracking purposes. This is used a lot right now and does not require you speak with NCSU about using their login systems.

The most important thing is that you need to have a place where students can leave actual feedback. This would be an optional field that someone will have to monitor but that field alone can specify a lot of issues with a teacher. A lot of the tests that use Strongly Agree and Strongly Disagree leave no room for clarrification and don't cover "Can the teacher speak english clearly" or "Did the teacher show up for class on time".

If you're going to do it... do it right the first time. Don't copy the current forms used. They are piss poor... and that's a big part of why noone reads them.

2/15/2006 11:24:26 PM

Thanks everyone for your input. I'll continue to monitor the thread for additional thoughts on the matter.

In regards to a few of the comments above...

Quote :

"If you're going to do it... do it right the first time. Don't copy the current forms used. They are piss poor... and that's a big part of why noone reads them."

I can sense a WHOLE lot of red tape involved in changing the survey questions. My letter of marque is actually to port the previous system into a framework used by other things in the department. The original server was maintained under another department, may have been compromised, and needs to be moved and put back online on another machine.

Quote :

"Regardless of what you do make sure it requires that the student be in the class at the time of the review. This can be done using the current NCSU login systems. You'll have to communicate with them about this."

Right. Unfortunately this is difficult to do on a web form without WRAP authenticating people. Bubble sheets are really the best way to guarantee an anonymous survey.

Quote :

"if they just made up an id, someone else could be using that same id."

statistically this would be rare... if it were recommended that a person use "the name of their favourite pet" then occationally you would see two people taking surveys under 'Spike', however not often enough to alter and skew the statistics.

Quote :

" with systems like this - you just present it and tell people it's anonymous (assuming in actuality it is) - proof to back it up would help for the students that are jackasses and believe the system is out to get them - they will be the exception"

would open-source be sufficient proof? there would still be no guarantee that the source offered is the source being run... you'd still have to take the university's word on it. but hell, we all trust the university that uses our SSN as a public UID anyway.

2/16/2006 12:32:24 AM

i think you'd be adding a new degree of difficulty to this if you were assuming/guessing that it was the same person using the same name. if a group of people intentionally put in the same name, it would mess up your entire idea. plus, most people wouldn't remember from semester to semester.

2/16/2006 7:37:46 AM