• Students will now complete their course evaluations online to save money and speed up the process for instructors.
• Students received the evaluations via email and have two weeks to complete them if they choose to participate.
• Some professors are concerned that they will not receive adequate feedback because there are no incentives for the students to complete the evaluations, and they prefer for them to be completed in class.

Marquette has joined other colleges in switching paper course evaluations to online evaluations in order to reduce costs and improve the timeliness of the results, according to Gary Levy, Associate Vice Provost for Institutional Research and Assessment.

Students have already received the evaluation forms via e-mail and have until Dec. 6 to complete them. The evaluation format is the same as before, but all of the questions are answered online, and students can now type their comments instead of hand-writing them.

The old evaluation package, including the paper, pencils and shipping costs, were purchased from the University of Washington each semester. Completed materials were mailed there from Milwaukee to be assessed. The new online system is done in house and eliminates the one- to two-month waiting period for professors to view evaluation results.

Levy estimates that $20,000 to $25,000—in addition to a tremendous amount of paper—is being saved.

"We hated that students and instructors had to take time out of their classes to fill them out, and also that students who were absent on evaluation day didn't have a chance to give their input," Levy said. "There's no incentive provided because we thought that it defeated the purpose. We would like a 100 percent response rate but we also want the responses to be 100 percent valid."

But some professors aren't happy about the switch. Anthropology instructor Kathleen Foley Winkler said she is frustrated with the switch because she thinks her responses will not be accurate.

"I'm not happy about it," Foley Winkler said. "The only people that I'll get a response from are the people that are either extremely happy or extremely unhappy with the class and it eliminates the general consensus. I like that it's saving paper, but I know that I won't get the feedback that I like to get."

Students seem to have mixed feelings about taking personal time outside of class to fill out the forms that they were previously given class time for.

"I'm not doing mine. It has no effect on my grade," said Gianna Macchia, a junior in the College of Education. "I'm not going to take time to fill them out unless I have something I really want to say because no one is making me."

Joseph Bialorucki, a junior in the College of Business Administration, said he will find time over Thanksgiving break to complete his evaluations because he wants his voice to be heard.

"I'll do them eventually," Bialorucki said. "The only thing I don't like is that I'm not sure if the professors have access to it or if they can see my name because you have to log in to complete them."

Levy guarantees that the online evaluations offer more anonymity because instructors can identify student handwriting on the paper forms. Students can log onto http://www.marquette.edu/oira/ceval/ and view a sample of the results that instructors will receive after the evaluations are assessed.

Students that have pushed the e-mail aside can expect to receive a reminder every three days until Dec. 6.

"The two week period gives students time to think about their responses," Levy said. "We realize that they're busy and we want to give them a convenient way to get them done."