As mid-terms finish up, many students saw the option to complete their first course evaluations for the year through Watermark rather than the usual platform.
Kennesaw State University started using Watermark Course Evaluations and Surveys for the first time this semester in replacement of Explorance Blue. The Watermark system will be used to capture feedback on faculty activities, performance and promotion and tenure portfolios according to KSU.
Watermark is designed specifically for colleges to collect student feedback and claims to convert student responses into steps the university can act on. Established in 2018, the company’s goal has been to continue advancing educational technology, and since then it has won multiple awards for its product.
Although these course evaluations are standard, many students are unsure how they work, what they do, and if there are any benefits.
Course evaluations are used by universities to gather feedback on the course from students and distribute it to administrators and faculty. The goal is to help teachers improve their coursework and teaching and for the university to gain an understanding of its strengths and weaknesses in the classroom.
One issue with course evaluations is motivating students to complete them. Often evaluations are optional, meaning it is up to the student whether or not they will provide feedback. This issue has the potential to create a non-response bias in the course evaluations meaning the portion of students who did not respond represents a significant amount of opinions that the data is now lacking.
Often students with strong opinions may be the only ones to complete the course evaluations since they care more about the future of the course or the teacher. This could make the results have a drastic difference in negative and positive feedback, and contain little average feedback.
Teachers often motivate and remind students to complete the evaluations to combat this lack of responses and may even offer course credit upon completion. Teachers communicate to students how the evaluations can help them as teachers and how they can use them to help better the coursework.
This feedback in turn helps the university by giving them insight into what students think. Course evaluations can collect what type of teachers, coursework, learning style, etc. students want. This information influences who the university has teach classes, what material is covered, who to promote and more.
Another issue with course evaluations is the likelihood that students will take the evaluations seriously. Since the evaluations are not required, students may complete them but not put in a lot of effort since they do not know where the feedback is going or what it is used for.
Dr. Gravestock, University of Toronto Education Developer, believes that sharing course evaluations with students after they are completed would allow students to understand how their feedback is being used and believe the university values it.
