Lessons Learned From Online vs. Paper-based Computer Information Students’ Evaluation System

Abstract

Many universities are offering online courses these days. What follows consequently is that instructors are being evaluated online as well, and due to among other reasons -potential cost savings, even some traditional courses are being evaluated online now as well. This paper presents the results from a pilot test at a large south-eastern universities’ Computer Information Systems department within the college of business of moving to online evaluations. The results show that some faculty did not like to be evaluated online due to fears of receiving lower scores or lower response rates; however, our study showed that there was no difference in the important instructor effectiveness question in paper vs. online evaluations, and due to special circumstances that online evaluations had an even higher response rate than paper based evaluations.