OCQs

Among faculty, online course questionnaires can be a source of pride and satisfaction—and frustration and anxiety. As Bayraktar (2020) notes:  There is long standing evidence as well as many big-picture, philosophical reasons why course evaluations are problematic (evidence of gender bias and racial/ethnic bias, evidence that that students will give worse ratings to professors who benefit their learning in the long term and that students are not able to discern what actually makes good teaching, among other criticism)…Even for a faculty member whose evaluations are largely positive – and we know that the very happy and very unhappy students are more likely to respond – they simply are not useful. 

As Weiman (2017) explains, No matter how much we debate the issue, end-of-course evaluations count. How much they count is a matter of perspective. Both authors advocate for using the questionnaire to improve courses for the next semester and think about what should be changed or kept (more or less) the same by asking customized questions that are catered to better understanding the aspects of your course that you see as most relevant.

IU sends out Question Personalization Task instructions that allow you to add up to 6 personalized quantitative and 6 qualitative questions to your OCQ. You must submit them by November 11, 2021, for 13-week courses and November 28, 2021, for 2nd 8-week/16-week courses.

Marymount University offers this categorized list of custom OCQ questions that may be used to develop more specific questions that better relate to your course. https://www.marymount.edu/marymount.edu/media/Planning-Institutional-Effectiveness/Course%20Evaluations/Question-Bank.pdf aimed to address:

• Instructor Responsiveness and Method
• Course Content
• Student Learning and Workload
• Specific Types of Courses (i.e. labs, service learning, online courses)
• Student Self-Evaluation Questions