For several years, The University of Alabama had been considering making a transition from paper course evaluations disseminated in the classroom to an on-line (anytime, anywhere) course evaluation system. A task force was formed to review products available from third party vendors. Between fall 2008 and fall 2009 pilot tests were conducted with eXplorance Inc.’s Blue Evaluation. In spring 2010, all courses previously evaluated with the paper forms will be converted to fully online course evaluations.

Reasons for the change

UA wanted to apply the best technological solutions available to encourage student s to share their opinions of instruction. The paper forms created tremendous volumes of paper to be handled by the academic departments, all of which must be manually scanned (i.e. over 40,000 each semester in Arts & Sciences alone). Stray marks or punctured paper may render the submission invalid because the scanner cannot read it. Students must also complete the evaluation within a limited amount of time at the end of a class session which can lead to less thoughtful responses. Additionally, due to the manual nature of the paper forms, reports to faculty often take months to deliver, therefore faculty cannot act on feedback provided by students in a timely manner. The new online system eliminates paper and invalid submissions, provides students access to complete the evaluation anytime, anywhere enabling them to provide more thoughtful responses, and reports can be delivered to faculty within a matter of days instead of months.