After the last few post-Halloween blogs, you’re probably sick of this topic and the dribbles of info in each blog. Sorry about that. This is the final installment on the “you know what.”
What is the BOTTOMLINE, HANDS-DOWN and UP, BEST STRATEGY TO USE? (Note: You don’t find this type of excitement and suspense in every blog. Brace yourself. Here it comes.) ANSWER: Withhold the posting of final grades. If your registrar is super-efficient at posting grades online in a timely fashion, you’re sunk. That is usually not a problem, because he or she has a bazillion courses to process.
If students are given a 48-hour window following the final exam or project within which to complete the evals, post the grades online on your course Website ASAP. Tell the students in advance both in class and online when they will be posted. That’s the academic version of a “grade (as opposed to movie) trailer” or teaser. This quick post will be perceived as a monster-size carrot or hot fudge sundae to your students. (Note: Certainly there are some courses where students can compute their own final grades, but they need the scores or grades from the final exam or project.)
We can leverage this Net Generation’s characteristics to maximize the response rates we need. Why should they bother to rate our performance? Although there may be some legitimate intrinsic reasons, why take a chance? Go after the extrinsic ones. As noted in my August 2009 blog series, these Net Geners have a need for speed, immediate gratification, and quick feedback on performance, plus they are driven to achieve, feel pressure to succeed, and expect rapid responses from us on everything. Receiving grades “immediately” feeds into these characteristics.
Institutions engaging in this practice over the past few years, including my own, have reported 80–90%+ response rates for most all courses with buckets of typed comments to open-ended or unstructured questions to boot. It might be worth giving it a whirl at your institution.
Let me know your thoughts and experiences with this issue and any other techniques you have used successfully to boost response rates.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
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