By Michael Napolitano
More than half the students who took classes in the spring semester responded to Northeastern’s new online Teacher Rating Course Evaluations (TRACE), said the Chair of the TRACE Implementation Committee James Fox. This outcome has incited a mix of optimism and doubt among the faculty.
With a 56 percent response rate, TRACE surpassed its first-year goal of reaching half of students in classes, but, as expected, did not reach the numbers of the mandatory in-class evaluations from previous semesters, Fox said Friday.
“For the first year, it was a very successful turnout,” he said.
Fox said one of the biggest things they will work to improve is the response rates.
“Over time, TRACE will become part of the culture, as more students become used to it,” he said
But not everyone is convinced that the switch to online evaluations is a good thing.
“I think the new TRACE system makes it harder for students to participate, since they have to remember to do it on their own rather than filling out the forms in class,” said Dan Kennedy, an assistant journalism professor. “I encouraged my students to do it several times, but I only got a 65 percent response rate in one class and 55 percent in the other.”
Kennedy said he hopes the numbers will rise as students get used to the new system, but said he focuses more on his department’s own evaluation system.
“For the first semester, I think it went very well,” said Erin Pritchard, vice president-elect for student affairs in the Student Government Association (SGA). Pritchard said TRACE’s highest number of responses came after reminder e-mails were sent out, and the school would work on advertising the program more in future semesters.
“The SGA has been taking suggestions for improvement into consideration, and will be involved in future improvements to the evaluations,” she said.
Fox said SGA has also been considering imposing penalties on those who do not fill out the evaluations in the future, like delaying the release of offenders’ grades by a few weeks. But Fox said this idea has only been briefly discussed so far.
“We’re also considering positive incentives for those that do choose to fill out the surveys, like bookstore deals,” he said.
Aside from the potential problem of getting students to respond, Fox said there are many benefits to the quality of the evaluation program that have come about since the switch to TRACE. Students can already access past evaluations of any professor from semesters dating back to fall 2003 by using the Self Service tab on the myNEU portal. This serves as a more in-depth version of what sites like ratemyprofessor.com offer.
Fox said the quality of information gathered from the students will improve with the new evaluation format.
“What I was most impressed with was the large amount of detailed comments we received,” Fox said. “Students were able to sit down and type paragraphs in the comments section on their own time, instead of rushing through it to get out of class.”
Fox said written feedback is valuable, and that he was impressed with the thoughtfulness of many students’ reviews.
“I was more motivated to write in the comments section now that I could do it whenever I wanted,” said Artie Egitto, a junior business major. “It took a few e-mails to finally get me to fill out the evaluations, but I like not having to do it at the end of class.”
