Abstract:

Student course evaluations are widely used in higher education as an important mechanism for monitoring teaching quality and supporting institutional quality assurance and accreditation processes. Many institutions rely on mandatory evaluation systems to ensure high participation rates. However, compulsory participation may lead to survey fatigue and disengaged responses, potentially affecting the quality and authenticity of the feedback collected.

This study examines an institutional transformation of the course evaluation system at Al Hussein Technical University (HTU), Amman, Jordan, where the university shifted from a mandatory evaluation model to a voluntary student feedback approach. The change was motivated by concerns related to survey fatigue, response quality, and the desire to encourage more authentic student participation. As part of the transformation, the evaluation instrument was redesigned and shortened to simplify the feedback process for students. The system is implemented across the university and covers more than 500 course sections each semester.

Institutional data from two consecutive semesters were analyzed. The first semester corresponds to the mandatory evaluation system, while the second semester represents the voluntary model. The dataset includes participation rates, quantitative evaluation scores for instructors and lab instructors, and qualitative open-ended responses collected from several thousand student responses.

The results show that participation rates decreased substantially under the voluntary system, with the number of respondents dropping to approximately one-fifth of the mandatory model. Despite this reduction, the average instructor evaluation scores remained largely unchanged. However, score dispersion increased under the voluntary model, with the standard deviation rising from 0.486 to 0.556 (approximately 14.4%), indicating a broader distribution of evaluation outcomes. A similar pattern was observed for lab instructor evaluations.

Qualitative responses were also analyzed. Under the mandatory model, all respondents submitted open-ended feedback, but only about 25% of these responses were considered meaningful. In contrast, under the voluntary model approximately 60% of respondents completed the open-ended questions, and 52% of those responses were classified as meaningful. These findings suggest that voluntary evaluation systems may produce fewer responses overall but generate more focused and authentic qualitative feedback.

The findings highlight important trade-offs between participation rates and feedback quality when designing course evaluation systems. The results suggest that voluntary evaluation models, combined with shorter surveys, may help reduce survey fatigue while maintaining stable evaluation averages and mitigating potential evaluation inflation effects often associated with compulsory feedback systems.

Keywords:

Student evaluation of teaching, voluntary participation, mandatory evaluation, survey fatigue, higher education.