Course Evaluation Forms

Q: Does LERN have information on what to include in class evaluation forms?

A: Good course evaluations are an important tool in making your program successful.

in terms of format, you are going to get the best response from surveys and evaluation forms if you keep them short – 5 questions maximum. You have to decide whether the information gathered from each question is worth the time to collect it. Generally, the more questions asked, the fewer the responses, and the more incomplete responses. Two pages of questions will immediately appear daunting to customers.

Demographic and psychographic information should be solicited separately from course evaluations. One good way to obtain this type of information is to have your instructors hand out a brief survey in the first class session, letting class participants know that the information will help improve the quality of future programming. Asking too much from your customers at once will simply reduce the number of responses you receive.

For your course evaluations, determine what is most important to find out from the questions – how you want the information to help you improve your program. Ideally you should consider an evaluation of the course and instructor separately from questions that address things like classroom environment/facilities, equipment, your registration process, etc. Questions on course content should precede marketing questions – e.g. questions like ‘How did you hear about this class?” and about your registration process should follow questions about the specific class, or should even be asked separately to help keep the evaluation form brief.

· Ask only questions that you can act upon. Don't ask questions where answers give you information about which you can do nothing or which are too vague to provide you actionable value. For example, what is the difference between “Facilities & Accommodations” and “Safety & Cleanliness” on your forms? If you were to receive negative response on one and positive on the other, how would you know what that means? For something like “Facilities & Accommodations” are you asking about convenient locations, adequate rooms sizes, heat or cold comfort levels, etc.? You need to know how the answers will impact your follow-up actions - which leads us to ….

· Be specific. Ask questions that will give you information you can use to make adjustments or changes, for example, “Did the facility offer convenient parking?” or "Did you feel safe and comfortable in finding and using the classroom?" etc.

· Give options (multiple choice or Likert scale, for which you have done for most of your questions) for the answers, rather than asking open-ended questions.

· Give respondents the opportunity to make suggestions for ways to improve your program and for additional classes by offering an “Comments” option at the end – which you have also done.

Think about exactly what it is you want to do with the information from the survey, and determine which questions take priority to help you get the direction you need in order to take action.

The best time to administer the course/instructor evaluation is actually twice - in a course that meets more than once, give it out in the middle and then at the next to last class. The first submission lets you monitor any problems that might be identified and correct them with the instructor before the class ends. Attrition increases with the length of the class, so if you wait until the last class meeting, you may get fewer responses.

I also recommend that you visit the LERN Club and go to the section with archived webinars. We have a webinar there, which is free to you to view, with very specific tips for creating successful evaluations.

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