Student evaluation of instruction: comparison between in-class and online methods

Abstract

This study compares student evaluations of instruction that were collected in-class with those gathered through an online survey. The two modes of administration were compared with respect to response rate, psychometric characteristics and mean ratings through different statistical analyses. Findings indicated that in-class evaluations produced a significantly higher response rate than online evaluation. In addition, Rasch analysis showed that mean ratings obtained in in-class evaluation were significantly higher than those obtained in online evaluation. Finally, the distributions of student attendance and expected grade in both modes were compared via chi-square tests, and were found to differ in the two modes of administration.

Keywords:

• student evaluation of teaching
• higher education
• online evaluation
• paper evaluation