By EMMA TROTTER

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Stanford’s new online course evaluation system boasted a 88.8 percent participation rate from students, leading Registrar Roger Printup to declare the debut a success.

Fliers advertising the new system attempted to entice students with the prospect of a friendly competition: “Can Stanford beat Yale’s 80% response rate?”

But students also had more tangible reasons to fill out their course evaluations by the Dec. 17 deadline. Participants were entered in a drawing to win one of 50 iTunes gift cards, and students who did not complete their evaluations on time could not view their grades until January.

Some students, however, said that the enticements did not make them any more likely to fill out evaluations.

“I would have done them anyway,” said freshman Sylvie Rousseau. “I think they’re useful.”

ASSU Senator Danny Arbeiter, a junior, agreed.

“I hope students realize that evaluation data results are used in setting salaries and preparing teaching award nominations, so students are actually quite empowered when they provide their input,” he said.

In their first run, ASSU senators and the Registrar’s Office said they were pleased with the results.

Two years ago, course evaluations at Stanford were completely on paper. The first half consisted of the same questions that are now online, focusing on feedback for the faculty. The other half consisted of a series of questions written by the ASSU, intended to provide a venue for students to offer advice to other students about which courses and professors to choose.

The paper evaluations were cited by administrators as cumbersome and laborious to sort. The new online system features a level of efficiency missing in previous years.

As students old enough to remember the paper evaluations probably noticed, the second half of the questions was missing from last quarter’s evaluations. The ASSU is taking steps to remedy this issue in future quarters. However, a “delicate balance,” as Arbeiter characterized it, is causing the hesitation.

“Personally, I would be very happy if we could add the questions from the bottom half of the old paper evaluations to the online course evaluation system, as I found this data very useful,” Arbeiter said. “However, all of us are very afraid to add a second page of questions to the course evaluation system, as we fear that if the questionnaire is too long, the participation rate will drop dramatically.”

Ideally, the evaluation summaries will be available to students from within the online time schedule, Arbeiter said.

The new online evaluation system, however, did nothing to address the lack of a course guide for students, placing Stanford behind its peer institutions, most of which provide a wealth of student-generated opinions on classes and teachers online.

Harvard freshman Katie Shick said she relies upon her school’s Course Evaluation Guide.

“At the end of each term we have the option to evaluate our courses based on professor, workload, and difficulty, among other criteria,” she said. “The information is available online, and hard copies are also distributed to students.”

The ASSU appears to be moving in this direction for course evaluations at Stanford, but members have yet to figure out a practical way to provide detailed information without adversely affecting student participation.

“The best format and medium in which the ASSU should do this is something we’ll have to discuss now that we actually have data to work with again,” Arbeiter said. “We’d greatly appreciate students’ feedback on this topic.”

— Additional reporting by

Christian L. Tom