The Value of the Virtual Learning Environment: How can we support staff and student engagement in module evaluation surveys?

When moving module evaluation online, our experience suggests that universities run the risk of accidentally excluding lecturers from the process as it can be seen as an IT-led procedure only – especially when staff have previously managed module evaluations from start to finish.

At the same time, when taking the steps towards online evaluations institutions can frustrate students by bombarding them with multiple email invitations and reminders per survey. When navigating these challenges, one thing that everyone can agree on is it makes sense to engage staff and students as much as possible with the process, in the place they work every day – the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Management System (LMS).

It is therefore important to understand what truly integrates module evaluations with the VLE/LMS. With Blue these generally cover Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace and Moodle. In our webinar on 15^th April we considered strategic and operational issues such as sharing module evaluation tasks with teaching staff; personalising questions at module level; tracking module evaluations from start to finish; accessing reports, surveys and reminders; and advanced integration with calendars and assignments.

The universities we work with enjoy institution-wide response rates ranging from 30% to 90%. Those that achieve 50% or more tend to go beyond standard email reminders and place greater emphasis on engagement and closing the loop. They also analyse this down to individual departments and pinpoint ‘local’ action plans.

Here are my tips on how to foster staff and student engagement in module evaluation surveys, through integration with your VLE/LMS:

Staff

Giving colleagues the opportunity to track module evaluations from beginning to end – before, during and after the process – supports engagement.

Our surveys incorporate university-wide, department, module-specific, teacher rating and demographics questions. However, colleagues can add questions from Blue’s question bank and also write their own questions through our Question Personalisation (QP) function. These are supplementary to those which are posted by the University or department. Similarly, staff can also schedule evaluation timings. There is also the option, which is especially pertinent at this time, to adjust questions for face-to-face and online teaching. Differentiating questions on delivery mode leads to differentiation in reporting.

Staff should also have licence to monitor response rates. This can be done in our dashboard which highlights overall response status and course evaluation participation rates. In turn, staff should be encouraged to view and interrogate results. They can see everything from channels, browsers and operating systems being used by students, to location and days/times of the week which are the most popular for responding.

Student

Generally, our process sees the module leader receiving a report and being invited to provide feedback on results. Student feedback results are merged with the module leader’s comments, and student-facing reports are then published to the VLE/LMS. Accessing and downloading these is a key part of closing the feedback loop.

Give students a reason to engage in the process through the ability to evaluate both the module itself and individual teachers. They can rate, for example, how a lecturer and support staff (e.g. a lab or dissertation supervisor) score against set questions. Different questions for different members of staff can be specified by the module leader. For the lecturer these could include ‘communicates clearly’, ‘is approachable’ and ‘involves students’. For support staff these may be ‘demonstrates interest in course and class material’, ‘understands materials on the course’ and ‘communicates effectively’.

Through Blue evaluation schedules can be integrated into VLE/LMS announcements or calendars as reminders. And the optional ‘course blocking’ function means that students cannot access learning materials until they have completed an evaluation. Those institutions which use this feature tend to do so towards the end of a module evaluation cycle, and those that do report response rates up to 75%.

John Atherton is General Manager – Europe and South Africa at Explorance

Note

Our next webinar, “Is your online evaluation system Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 compliant?”, is now scheduled for 6^th May. We are also delighted to announce a further webinar on 13^th May on “How can we capture the student voice in a time of coronavirus?” The unprecedented time we are all experiencing around Covid-19 has led to huge challenges for the HE sector worldwide. The fundamental shift to online teaching has raised serious questions around how the student voice can be captured effectively (for module evaluation and beyond), especially given the sector’s reliance on traditional approaches. In response, we have pulled together an expert panel to allow anyone with an interest in student voice, student satisfaction and student engagement to hear from leading HE professionals who are grappling with this challenge. This webinar is essential for anyone working in teaching and learning, student experience or student success.