Abstract:

Background:
One of the key academic activities at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) is to conduct lecturer evaluations each semester or year depending on the course-offering. Although a paper based system is used at the institution, the faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment adopted online lecturer evaluations. Despite the potential advantages of online evaluations, such as guaranteed anonymity, it came as a surprise that response rates dramatically fell across all departments in the faculty. Nulty (2008) reported the same reduced trend on online student response rates.

Interventions:
Although a variety of strategies for improving response rates were consequently tested, such as extra credits, email reminders, withholding grades and the shortening of questionnaires, student evaluations seem to remain external to the day-to-day business of teaching and learning and reflection upon the practice for both students and lecturers seem to remain ancillary. The fact that lecturer involvement in the process became less through the years, could well contribute to this. Anderson et al (2006) observes that instead of seizing the opportunity to use student feedback and perspectives about the learning experience as an occasion to engage in a discussion about instructional strategies and student responsibilities, the evaluation is instead relegated to a largely dreaded administrative ritual.

Case study:
As a case study the authors analyze and reflect on 29 subjects in the Department of Architecture over a three year period. The department of Architecture was chosen, since it is the only department in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment which showed a constant average increase in the online response rate of students, from an average of 23% in 2016 to an average response rate of 33% in 2019. The reasons for this increase, and differences from the rest of the faculty, are explored by interviewing 10 lecturers and 20 students from the department of Architecture and other departments.

Result:
The key themes that emerged from the narratives show that the reasons for an increase in the participation rates of students are the customization of the format of the questionnaires to make them more meaningful and relevant to specific subjects, the involvement of lecturers in the process to emphasize the need and importance of evaluations and the attitude of the Head of Department towards evaluations.

Keywords:

Lecturer evaluations, student response rate, lecturer involvement, online evaluations.