The first trial of online course evaluations last semester garnered a combined overall response rate of 64 percent from the College of Arts and Sciences and the graduate and professional schools, Provost Marty Krauss announced in a campus-wide e-mail Dec. 12.The College of Arts and Sciences had a response rate of 63 percent, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 52 percent, the Heller School for Social Policy and Management 70 percent, the International Business School 72 percent and the Rabb School of Continuing Studies 55 percent, Krauss wrote in her e-mail. The course evaluation period ran from the end of November until the start of finals Dec. 12.

Krauss said that moving evaluations online was "inevitable." In previous semesters, students filled out handwritten forms in class.

Assistant Provost Richard Silberman said that there was a sense among administrators that moving to an online format complements "the way things are moving," and that the school would eventually use this system anyway.

"It got harder and harder to justify using 20,000 forms each semester," Silberman said. He said sorting, scanning and processing the forms was very time-consuming. Krauss said putting more resources into paper was a waste of money, and that the University's scanner was breaking.

Silberman said that another problem with the handwritten evaluation was that it took months for professors to get results from the paper forms, and they wanted to be able to take students' comments into consideration for future courses. The evaluations are "one way to know you're really reaching students," he said.

A pilot program for online evaluations ran last spring with about 80 courses, Silberman said, explaining that the online evaluations now include all courses and physical education classes, as well as forms for Teaching Assistants. The new system ran smoothly from a technical standpoint, except for a few students who were timed-out prematurely from the onehour given to complete a form, he said.

With the new system, the University aims to "keep the response rate reasonably high," Silberman said. Students filling out the evaluation on their own inititiative, causes the rate to drop. He said that over time the rate will climb back up and administrators are "trying to avoid the initial drop."

Silberman said students told him that it is now easier to type in comments about courses and that they can take their time and think through the answers.

Krauss called the 63 percent response rate from the College of Arts and Sciences "respectable," and said the school "can continue to try and push that up." She said cooperation from faculty, the Student Union and the Community Advisors, who urged their residents to complete the evaluations, was "terrific."

Silberman said the many methods used to publicize the evaluations created "a bit of a buzz on campus." He said there was a "final surge" in filling out the evaluations toward the end of the evaluation period.

He said the school held off on moving evaluations online for a few years because it had recently reformatted its paper evaluation and did not want to make both changes at the same time.

Silberman said that the evaluations are important because one copy goes to the department chairs, who can determine how effective their faculty members are, and then address any issues quietly. He said evaluations also help faculty gain tenure, promotions and teaching awards.

Course evaluations were not yet available to faculty and the course evaluation guide was not online as of press time. Several professors said they could not yet comment on the evaluations at this time.

Janet Hill from LTS,?who worked on the evaluations, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that the plan is to make the results for each individual course available to instructors by the end of January. She said Teaching Assistant evaluation reports should be released by mid February, and that her hope is to make reports that aggregate the data by department available to department and program chairs by the end of February.

Silberman said some feedback on the system was sent during the evaluation period and that it was put together in a file, all issues will be discussed. Krauss said she is interested in doing an analysis on the patterns of the results.

A raffle will be conducted this week for students who filled out the evaluations, Silberman said. Prizes will include an iPod Nano and lunch at the faculty club with an administrator.