How do you get respondents to complete their surveys, even if there is no compulsory factor to do so? MassBay Community College successfully achieves a response rate of 55-70% on course evaluations for each session/ semester throughout the academic year, without a compulsory factor for students to complete their evaluations.

In this webinar, Bridget Madden of MassBay Community College will share the innovative approaches that she implements at the college to boost response rates. Join this session to learn MassBay’s “special sauce” recipe, which includes a comprehensive communication plan, use of multiple channels (analog and digital) and types of information communicated, and thorough calendaring techniques. These combined “ingredients” help boost student and faculty engagement and overall course evaluation response rates.

Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Time: 2pm Eastern Time

Presented by: Bridget Madden, MassBay Community College

Discover how pre-course surveys help faculty connect with students from Day 1. The University of Pittsburgh’s new Pre-course Survey, launched in Spring 2024, enables instructors to gather formative feedback to set expectations and support student success. This Feedback Culture series session will  cover: 

• Using pre-course surveys to enhance teaching, response rates, and course design. 
• The benefits of timely feedback and restricted report access. 
• Gaining buy-in from faculty and administration. 
• Customizing surveys and reports with Explorance Blue.

Attendees will also gain access to the Faculty Reflection on Student Feedback worksheet.

Date: Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Time: 1pm Eastern Time

Presented by: Lisa Votodian, University of Pittsburgh

Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2024

Time: 12pm Eastern Time

Panelists: Elizabeth Gillis, Dalhousie University, Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Dalhousie University, Veronica Womack, Northwestern University

Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2024

Time: 12pm Eastern Time

Panelists: Julie Schell, University of Texas at Austin, Joyce Chen, The Ohio State University, and Veronica Womack, Northwestern University

Over the past few years, Boise State University has been making a concerted effort to evaluate and improve their enterprise course evaluation system. Stakeholders in Academic Affairs and Information Technology looked at internal systems and processes as well as the web-based software tool that delivered the evaluations. This presentation describes Boise State’s transition to Blue from a legacy system (while also transitioning support and administration to central IT) and how it presented opportunities to examine and improve many of their practices, while introducing value adds like universal questions.

In this webinar you will learn about the history of course evaluations at Boise State, what led to transition to Blue, learning about the implementation and how the University has embraced it’s new course evaluation tool.

Date: Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Time: 1pm EST 

Presented by: Dr. Leif Nelson and Michael Ellis, Boise State University

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Qualitative comments in course evaluations give details to insights contextualizing quantitative data, and more and more institutions are utilizing text-analytics technology such as Blue Text Analytics and BlueML to analyze qualitative comments. One of the capabilities that such text-analytics technology provides is detection of potentially concerning comments - overly negative, offensive, threatening, harassing, biased, and/or indicators of potential misconduct. The key question asked was “Are institutions ready to handle such comments of concern, as they are detected?” In this virtual panel session, panelists will discuss challenges in handling such potentially concerning comments and strategies on how to go about addressing such challenges, such as expanding or clarifying policies and procedures, identifying needed competencies for various stake holders (students, faculty, admin staff, etc), and ensuring that relevant training and communications are available.

Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023 

Time: 4pm Eastern Time

Panelists: Brad Wuetherick, UBC; Lisa Votodian, University of Pittsburgh; Meagan Morrissey, University of Newcastle

Moderator: Pete Baccile, Explorance

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The standard Blue module surveys provide useful results of the student responses for actionable insights. But can we get them to work harder for us? Join the webinar to discover how Birkbeck have added greater context and providing a more rounded picture of the module and its place in the wider degree programme. Explore how module evaluation reports can become valuable quality assurance resources through:

• Using the closing-the-loop functionality to provide feedback back to students
• Enabling module leaders to write their own contemporaneous thoughts to assist with module development
• Enabling module leaders to provide context for their manager and head of department
• Grouping module results into Programme-wide reports
• Incorporating other module and programme data to provide greater context.

Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Time: 10am EST / 3pm BST

Presented by: Garmon ap Garth, Birkbeck University of London

Obtaining student feedback for medical and health sciences is critical and differs from other university programs due to specific scenarios such as different starting dates, block rotations, and multiple instructors. Student feedback gathering in medical and health schools faces a variety of challenges, including data accuracy and preparation, leveraging multiple data sources, monitoring new and dropped students, and new teacher assignments. A centralized system that can handle all surveys and evaluations in one project does not only increases efficiency but may be necessary for student success.

In this Panel discussion, we will go over various response rates techniques such as LMS integration, Reminders, the availability of in-class reminders, and QR codes. In addition, we will demonstrate how to disseminate reports at various levels, such as instructor, program, and/or school. Join us where our respected panelists will share their institution's best practices and techniques for medical school evaluations.

Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023 

Time: 11am Dubai Time

Panelists: Dr. Heba Ismail, Dubai Medical College for Girls, Dr. Adrian Stanley, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr. Maher Alandiyjany, Batterjee Medical College

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You’ve collected your feedback data; now how do you turn it into actionable insights to improve the student learning experience, teaching effectiveness, and operational efficiencies? Join this webinar (part 2 of 2) to learn how Washburn SON makes sense of data from various sources (SIS, LMS, Blue, etc.) in Blue Dashboard and data warehouse in a way for various stakeholders to glean insights and take actions, using data from Blue as a basis for meta-analysis. Washburn SON will also share how the outputs from Blue are integrated to inform accreditation readiness and view improvement trends over time to improve student learning outcomes.

Date: Wednesday, March 8, 2023 

Time: 2pm Eastern Time

Presented By: Linda Merillat, Washburn University, School of Nursing

Join this webinar (part 1 of 2) to learn how Washburn SON draws on the power of Blue with various project set-ups for a wide range of evaluations (such as end-of-term courses, end-of-program, peer-to-peer, agency-preceptor, and faculty workshop evaluations) to provide a more holistic view of student and faculty feedback for actionable insights. Washburn SON will also share how they bring scalability and consistency to their evaluations with the use of Blue Question Bank, to connect specific learning objectives as questions in course evaluations. In addition, you will learn how Washburn SON reports on this data at various levels (including reports for Instructors, Course Coordinators, Program Directors, Associate Deans, and Dean/Director of Assessments).

Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 

Time: 2pm Eastern Time

Presented By: Linda Merillat, Washburn University, School of Nursing

View this webinar recording to learn best practices implemented at the Gulf Medical University on how several surveys and evaluations were administered across different medical and healthcare programs. The webinar also highlights how the results of these evaluations helped in addressing the accreditation standards at both local and international levels and hence fostered the quality assurance system at GMU. The webinar reflects on various features of Blue that were used in:

• Managing high volume of surveys versatile in scope
• Engaging academic teams in enhancing response rates
• Reporting the evaluation results to meet the customized requirements from the stakeholder
• New and enhanced features used for effective reporting of evaluation results

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Time: 2:00pm KSA / 3:00pm UAE

Presenters: Prof. Sherief Khalifa & Dr. Syeda Asma Fatima, Gulf Medical University

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At its best, high-quality assessments provides actionable insights to inform curriculum and instructional decisions that would facilitate in assessing and improving the Quality of Education. The first step is to vet and design relevant, standards-based surveys and evaluations that can be used to measure satisfaction and effectiveness at the different stages of the student’s learning journey. Quality Assurance and Institutional Research departments works side by side with the Information technology department to build up these well-structured surveys at AUC.

View this webinar recording to learn AUC's best practices on how they have partnered with Explorance to leverage the Blue platform to:

• Enhance the process of designing and publishing different types of surveys.
• Overcome previous challenges with regards to stakeholders’ engagement.
• Design comprehensive reporting, including longitudinal analysis.
• Disseminate timely reports based on the institution’s hierarchy.

Presenter: Nouran Maher, Director, Tech Solutions, The American University in Cairo (AUC)

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Survey invitation and reminder emails can positively impact response rates. Many Bluenotes community members expressed their interest in learning about HTML codes used in survey emails. In this webinar, University of Florida will share various email HTML codes to make survey invitation and reminder emails more effective.

Time: December 1, 1:00pm Eastern Time

Presenter: John Jordi, University of Florida

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Academic institutions listen to students, via Student Evaluations of Teaching (also known in various terms such as course evaluations and module evaluations), at the end of a semester. As you do so, stakeholders may want to see an annual report that combines the results of the semesters in a particular academic year. You can use a Blue functionality called “project mapping” to do so. However, what if you have updated or added a few questions in the survey during the second semester? Can we have both versions of the questions and their responses in the annual report? In other words, can we map projects with different question blocks in Blue? Khwarizmi International College (KIC) was able to do so in Blue. In this webinar, KIC will share with you how you can “map” projects with different questions in Blue to produce an annual report that includes results on all questions.

Time: December 1, 4:00pm UAE Gulf Standard Time; 7:00am Eastern Time

Presenter: Anjali Rathod, Institutional Quality, Effectiveness and Assurance, Khwarizmi International College

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Student feedback on teaching (SFT) gather information and evaluate faculty for personnel decisions (Spooren & Christiaens, 2016; Darwin, 2017; Hornstein, 2017; Linse, 2017). These evaluations primarily capture students’ perception of their experience and satisfaction with teachers (and teaching), rather than teaching effectiveness. In 2017, the National University of Singapore (NUS) transitioned its centralized university-wide course evaluations (known as the SFT system) from an in-house online system to an automated online system using Blue.

In this webinar, we share the planning process, insights gained, and strategies employed in the implementation of a university-wide transition within a condensed timeline. First, we describe the lessons learned in terms of the importance of aligning key objectives of the exercise to the larger purpose, collaborating and engaging with the community, educating and engaging students, and building sustainable processes. Second, we share our experience with reporting and the approaches adopted to use feedback data in the overall analytics strategy of your institution. Finally, we end with an overview of our plans for the future.

Presenters: Kiruthika Ragupathi and Beh Keng Khim, National University of Singapore

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At a time when technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, and while students of this millennium are described as tech-savvy, fast-paced individuals who communicate with each other quickly and electronically, most educational institutions still face the challenge of polling students effectively.

This webinar discusses the best ways to elicit students’ opinions in a successful and continuous way, so that the students’ voice represents their impression of the development of the learning journey and their awareness of the outcomes of lessons and curricula. This webinar also focuses on how to achieve positive returns to expectations so that all stakeholders (student, teacher, course coordinator) participate in a sustainable and continuous improvement cycle.

Presenters:

• Prof. Maysaa Al Qurashi, Vice-Rector of Planning, Development and Quality, Saudi Electronic University (SEU)
• Suzan Abu Shakra, Faculty Affairs Manager, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST)
• Samer Jaffar, General Manager, MENA and Singapore, Explorance

View PDF presentation (Arabic)

This presentation shed light on the rapid transition to distance learning of a postgraduate dental medicine and an undergraduate medical program at the Mohammad Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU). An action research approach constituted the foundation of this collaborative effort that involved investigations, reflections, and improvements of practice, through ongoing cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Accordingly, existing platforms were leveraged, learning and teaching activities (including but not limited to assessments) were modified, and distance learning was proactively facilitated for all involved stakeholders. A series of convergent mixed methods research studies were conducted to systemically evaluate the experiences. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected, from learners and instructors, using contextualized, tailor-made surveys assembled through the Blue platform. These internally consistent and externally valid data collection tools were made using input provided by the Bluenotes community members. View this webinar recording to learn more about the results and implications.

Time: November 3, 4:00pm Dubai Time; 8:00am Eastern Timezone

Presenters: Professors Ritu Lakhtakia, Dr. Fatemeh Amir Rad, and Farah Otaki, MBRU

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Student feedback surveys are an important tool that should support teachers in the development of pedagogical skills and course delivery. They should motivate teachers to keep improving and help identify the measures that would help students to learn even more effectively. Yet, the feedback often ends up being used primarily by management when deciding on which courses and/or teacher positions should be maintained, and by prospective students when choosing between available courses. Instead of improving quality, course evaluations can sometimes exacerbate quality issues. Low satisfaction numbers discourage students from taking courses, which in turn often decreases the allocated resources and as a consequence the possibility of recovering from negative feedback.

How can we confront this paradox?

Generating, collecting, and reporting course evaluations is often a labor-intensive, time-consuming and largely manual process.  The majority of the academic year is often spent on "getting evaluations done" which leaves little margins for designing feedback surveys that go beyond course satisfaction and actually take individual teachers' needs into consideration. Further, due to late reporting and hard-to-understand reports, the collected data is in some cases not even used by the teachers, leaving students with the feeling that their feedback is not valued.

Here is a list of topics that institutions often struggle with, and which this webinar will provide practical advice in tackling:

• Flexibility of course questions in accounting for variations in course structure.
• Timely delivery of results to allow teachers to work with feedback while the memory of the course is still fresh.
• Data analysis to help teachers easily identify what they should focus on.
• Integrated reports and dashboards to help heads of institutions focus on key areas for improvement, instead on performance of individual courses/teachers.
• Creating a feedback loop between the students and the teachers which creates transparency while maintaining privacy.
• Adequate response rates to ensure survey results are representative and valid.

Presenters: Assia Viachka  - Academic Controller, Kristin Petersmann, PhD - Data Insights Manager, Stockholm School of Economics

Increasingly institutions are reflecting on the purposes of student evaluations of teaching, referred to by many names including student ratings of instruction and course evaluations. The numerous terms used to describe these instruments suggest a multitude of potentially conflicting purposes and/or audiences. In this webinar, the University of Saskatchewan will share its journey of shifting its instrument’s focus from evaluations to student learning experience feedback, along with its thoughtful change management efforts including rethinking of its instrument’s purposes and establishing student learning experience feedback policy and related processes for evidencing and assessing teaching quality.

Time: October 6, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenter: Nancy Turner, PhD, Director Teaching and Learning Enhancement, University of Saskatchewan

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Can Blue be used in assessment of courses and programs, in addition to students evaluating courses? Yes! Hennepin Technical College has developed an approach to use Blue in order to provide assessments on a course level and a program level, in a more efficient and effective way for faculty completing their end of term assessments.

Assessing the learning outcomes every term provides Hennepin (especially Deans and Program Directors) with insightful data and student demographic analytics – for example, reports comparing outcomes from a course level to an institutional level for benchmark comparisons. Join this webinar to learn how Hennepin Technical College has implemented Blue for assessment of courses and programs, and how everyone from faculty to deans have benefited.

Time: July 14, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenters: Shannon Thomas M.B.A., Interim Dean of Technology and Institutional Research, Hennepin Technical College

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As students at Somerset Community College are using services such as advisor and tutor services, they are able to provide timely feedback for student services on campus, as well as their experiences with tutors and advisors. By integrating student IDs with barcode scanning functionality, student services and Blue, Somerset initiates the student feedback process from each point-of-contact experience. This automated quick feedback process allows Somerset to address any issues as they arise in a timely manner, rather than waiting until the end of the term. Join Somerset’s community-led webinar to learn how you can expand your feedback process to the student service experiences.

Time: June 9, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenter: Jacob Held, Somerset Community College

Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) tried to increase the response rate of their Course and Instructor Evaluations over several years with limited success. In this Webinar, SUTD will share how their innovative usage of Blue and University Policies resulted in a 97% response rate in 2020.

Time: May 19, 4:00pm Singapore Timezone

Presenters: Magnus Bengtsson, Lead, Educational Technology, Office of Undergraduate Studies and Raifanah Binte Mohamed Ramli, Senior Associate, Educational Technology, Office of Undergraduate Studies, Singapore University of Technology and Design

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Many institutions have applied Blue in creative and innovative ways beyond course evaluations for feedback-informed decisions and a higher level of student experience. In this learning webinar, Candace Girard at Tufts University and Donna Davis at James Mason University are joining together to share how they are using Blue. You will learn how Tufts University uses Blue to retrieve data from OASIS, a clinical scheduling tool, to build reports that feed from multiple areas of OASIS into a single Blue-supported data sync in support of meeting the needs of medical and health sciences. You will also learn how James Madison University uses Blue to manage full-semester courses being divided into multiple four-week rotations. Each rotation covers key components for majors in specific disciplines. Enrollees are divided into smaller groups, simultaneously learning and evaluating each component before rotating to the next.

Time: May 5, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenters: Candace Girard, Tufts University and Donna Davis, James Mason University

The Instructor Role and triggers were setup for team-taught courses with multiple instructor roles in the same course. While those tools are powerful, our situation required specific questions for roles and, for an individual serving in multiple roles in the same course, those questions needed to be available “twice” in the questionnaire. Additionally, while one role (Instructor) was evaluated by all students, a different role (Facilitator) needed to be selectable to just the students who had this instructor in small group. In this webinar we will present the unique situation we faced as well as illustrate the solution we came up with to allow an instructor to be evaluated twice in the same form.

Time: April 14, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenters: Christina Pomykal, Program Manager, UNC-Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy; Michael Lee Jones, Professional Services Consultant, Explorance

What do you have in your toolbox to improve course evaluation response rates? More than what you think! Join this webinar to learn how Douglas College is using what they have in their toolbox to leverage social media with targeted visuals, reminders, and messaging directed towards students, with the aim of enhancing the visibility and use of their Course Feedback tool. You will also hear the future ideas on how they plan to leverage different strategies to help increase awareness and completion of students’ course feedback in the future.

Time: March 10, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenter: Suheyl Unver, PhD, Manager, Education & Services Research, Douglas College

The University of Strathclyde will present on the approach taken to implement Explorance Blue through a 2-year project, preceded by University-wide consultation which built on years of previous experience, including a range of approaches and module evaluation pilots across the institution. We will also present the dynamic governance structure which has been adopted for the phased approach to ensure appropriate academic representation and effective collaboration with academic, teaching and professional services colleagues. Blue module evaluation is delivered via integration with Strathclyde’s Moodle-based VLE and adopters of the system at each phase have represented a wide range of disciplines over undergraduate and postgraduate modules, taught both face to face and online. Strathclyde colleagues will report on evaluation to date that is built in to inform subsequent implementation of the system.

Time: February 10, 2:00pm British Timezone; 9:00am Eastern Timezone

Presenters: Brian Green, Caroline Breslin, Jacqueline Jahn, Lorna Robertson | University of Strathclyde

A central challenge for any institution in managing the course evaluation process is meeting the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders. Competing factors along with technical challenges can make reporting difficult in various governance environments. This webinar is the first initiated by Bluenotes community members to share report examples and instructions for their creation.

In this webinar, Dr. John Jordi at the University of Florida will share anonymized examples of reports developed to meet the needs of various stakeholders (college, department, faculty, and public) and how they created them. As Bluenotes community institutions share anonymized reports and resources, they can access them via the Explorance Help Center in a new shared repository of anonymized report examples and resources. Please join this learning webinar for innovative problem solving with your like-minded Bluenotes community colleagues.

Time: November 18, 2:00pm Eastern Timezone

Presenter: John Jordi, Ph.D., Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Florida

• Watch the Video
• Community Report Examples
• Let's continue discussing on the Bluenotes Reporting & Analytics Discussion Forum