Some students relish the opportunity to give instructors a piece of their mind when they fill out evaluations at the end of the quarter, but the numbers say many students don’t bother filling them out.

Ninety-two members of the history department, including faculty and graduate students, signed a petition Tuesday in response to concerns about the Student Evaluation of Instruction system, which went entirely online at the beginning of the academic year.

The petition, addressed to the university registrar, Brad Myers and 13 other university administrators, says that the current online SEI process is “ineffective, confusing, disingenuous, and most importantly, detrimental to student learning and the quality of instruction” at Ohio State.

Chris Elias, a graduate student in history, helped to organize the petition. He said the low response rate from students was troubling.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “people actually read them.”

And instructors, many of whom are graduate students, take criticism to heart to become better at teaching, he said.

In 2008, the average SEI response rate campus-wide was 73.74 percent, said Terri Childers, head of scanning and surveys for the University Registrar. In contrast, in autumn 2009, the first quarter SEIs were administered entirely online, the average response rate was 46.54 percent.

Wayne Carlson, vice provost for undergraduate studies and one of the recipients of the petition, said the low response rate is “concerning,” but he said he didn’t agree with all of the petition’s assertions.

He said research from other universities has shown that response rates usually drop after switching to an online system. But over time and through implementing different strategies, the response rate can increase. One way is for instructors to remind students to fill out online evaluations and to inform them of how valuable their feedback is, he said.

But he said he was “not totally convinced that that is all that’s necessary.”

Elias said he also believes the low response rate makes the results less reliable because only students with strong opinions will take the time to fill out the online form.

The SEI website states: “Comparisons of paper and online SEI results … have shown a negligible difference in the average overall ratings provided by students.”

But Elias said his experience has been that “the only students who are going to fill these out are the kids who hated you or the kids who loved you.”

Over spring break, members of the history department began seriously discussing low SEI response rates, which he said have been as low as 25 percent.

Signatures were mostly collected online.

Contrary to what many students think, Elias said, SEIs are important.

Graduate students who teach keep a portfolio of them, which prospective employers often ask to see, he said. They are also taken into account for tenure decisions.

Not only that, he said, but constructive criticism makes instructors better at what they do.

So far, he has not received an official response from the university administration, he said.

Carlson said he would present the concerns outlined in the petition to the University Senate subcommittee that is responsible for overseeing SEI policy.

Elias said he recognizes the convenience of the online system and said the petition’s purpose is “not to say that we should go back to the pen and paper and the little golf pencil.”

But he said the university is not doing enough to create incentives for students who fill out evaluations. The petition suggests a system where students who complete evaluations are able to view their final grades earlier than those who don’t.

That proposal is similar to a policy in place at Harvard, and according to an article in The Boston Globe earlier this month, some universities are considering withholding grades entirely until students complete evaluations.

Carlson said the SEI subcommittee would likely discuss incentives at its meetings. But there is a “general philosophy” that using grades is “not an incentive we would use to work around.”

Although students might think such measures would be going too far,
it would help them “to realize that these things are important,” Elias said.

“In the end, what students need to understand is that it helps them,” he said, “and it helps improve teaching at OSU, which I think we all can agree is something good.”