"The former method of using paper evaluations took time away from the final class period, when students are focused on exams and papers and when faculty are finalizing lessons," explained Stan Hudson, Associate Dean for Student Services. "The online questionnaires provide a larger window of time for completion than a class session, allowing students to be more reflective and less hurried in their responses."

At the end of each HSPH course, students fill out a form to rate the quality and usefulness of course content, the quality of teaching, and to give an overall rating. They are asked for other opinions, such as rating the overall effectiveness and accessibility of instructors and teaching assistants, and they are encouraged to write what they would tell another student about the class. The evaluations are considered part of the required coursework.

The new, more efficient questionnaire asks fewer questions than the previous form and uses a simpler scale from one to five, as opposed to the previous range of one to seven. The new form was developed with the input of the Committee on Educational Policy, volunteer faculty members, and student focus groups. A similar system was successfully launched at FAS last year.

The questionnaires have always been anonymous, and the online forms bolster that confidentiality by avoiding inadvertent identification of students through handwriting. Students will receive an email with a link to the course evaluation form, which they can access using a unique key. The key registers that a student has completed a form, but does not show the student's responses. That information is saved on an entirely different server. Explained Deane Eastwood, manager for instructional computing and application development at the School: "The two sets of data are not linked, so respondents are not matched to their forms."

General results will be posted for each course on the Registrar's web site under the "Course Evaluations" link so that students who are considering taking the course may better decide if the class offers what they need.

Students are not the only group to benefit from the availability of evaluations online. Faculty members will be able to see ratings online shortly after the end of a term. "It's nice to get the results back so quickly because it previously took almost a full semester," said Meredith Rosenthal, assistant professor of health economics and policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Her summer class in health economics helped pilot the online questionnaire. "The web display offers statistics, pie charts, and graphs that are easy to grasp quickly and that are flexible enough so you can drill down to specific patterns of information."

Faculty members will be able to save evaluation data so that they can compare how a course rates from year to year.

Evaluations provide feedback to instructors on what works well and what needs improvement. They help the Committee on Educational Policy recognize outstanding teaching and identify courses for improvement. They influence teaching assignments and aid the deliberation of faculty appointment committees. Because the evaluations provide such valuable guidance, they have been made a coursework requirement to be submitted before a student receives a grade for the class or registers for another term.

"HSPH faculty and senior administration take feedback from course evaluations very seriously, and courses are often revamped in response to students' constructive criticism," said Bernita Anderson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. "Course evaluations are an invaluable tool for engaging students in the process of refining the School's academic offerings."