The Online Student Evaluation Project(OSEP), which is in its second year, has seen an increase, and then a drop over three semesters.

‘In the published literature we’ve (Faculty Senate) seen, the participation is up the first couple of semesters, then drops and plateaus,’ said Faculty Senate President Dr. David Hogan.

The project started in Fall 2007 and 163 courses offered the online evaluation, which saw a 55 percent participation rate.

Spring 2008 saw an increase in courses, 415, and an increase in participation, 62 percent.
Fall 2008 saw a 12 percent participation rate drop, to 50.4 percent; 896 courses offered the online evalutations this semester. The statistics, for this semester also showed that web classes had a lower participation rate, 42.9 percent, compared to classroom the participation rate, which is at 52.6 percent.

Despite the dropping participation rate, Hogan is optimistic. ‘We need more semesters to see the trend.’
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n a an OSEP update, handed out at the Feb. 16 Faculty Senate meeting, some plans were written that could possibly increase student participation rates: ‘a communication plan is being developed to include student and faculty input’ and ‘a survey to be distributed to students to see what questions/concerns they have.’