Our Experience with Online Student Feedback

1
Our Experience with Online Student Feedback

• Adel Abunawass
• Will Lloyd
• Edwin Rudolph
• Department of Computer Science
• State University of West Georgiaadel,wlloyd,erud
  olph_at_westga.edu
• http//adel.cs.westga.edu/acmmidsoutheast04/

2
Motivation

• Know thoughts/input of stakeholders
• Collect/store data with minimum cost
• Quick reaction time to critical issues
• Documentation for assessment
• Documentation for specific program needs
• Curiosity!

3
Instruments

• Surveys
• Undergraduate
• Graduate
• Capstone
• Exit Interview
• Alumni
• Employers
• Students Evaluation of Instructions
• SEI
• Additional Surveys as requested/needed
• CS 1 / 2
• Interactive Blog
• CS Blog

4
Systems

• Free and open-source software
• phpESP PHP Easy Survey Package
• Easy to use web UI for survey creation,
  management, and reporting
• Data can be exported (i.e., Excel) or queried
  (MySQL)
• bBlog
• Simple blog system written in PHP using MySQL
• Integrated with
• Moodle A Free, Open-Source Course Management
  System for Online Learning
• COMPASS Our CS Assessment Project

5
Our Experience

• We gather feedback via
• Various Surveys
• Course Assessment
• Blog
• We formulate discussion points for blogging
• Faculty review and make recommendations
• Department takes appropriate actions
• Overall, it has been very positive, helpful,
  valuable, and less intrusive

6
Conclusions

• Be wise, easy tools are seductive
• Too much information is not always good
• Keep your questionnaires/requests clear, short,
  focused
• Keep your eyes on the prize- deal with important
  critical issues first
• Useful documentation for programmatic needs
• Must supplement formal assessment methods
• Just because you know something is broken, that
  does not mean you know how to fix it- take time
  to think through the issue develop an
  appropriate solution

7
References

• phpESP PHP Easy Survey Package
• http//phpesp.sourceforge.net/
• bBlog
• http//www.bblog.com/
• COMPASS Computer Science Assessment
• http//compass.cs.westga.edu
• Moodle A Free, Open-Source Course Management
  System for Online Learning
• http//moodle.org/