If you build it will they come?; Exploring the student perspective of weekly student evaluations of teaching

Abstract

This exploratory study investigated the students’ use of formative, weekly, online evaluations of teaching through a virtual learning environment. Results were based on in‐depth interviews of seven students at a rural university college in the UK. Students from different genders, education levels and backgrounds volunteered for the study. The students thought it was a good tool and useful for providing anonymous feedback. However, their motivation to fill in the evaluations every week varied throughout the period of study, and the weekly feedback soon became routine and too onerous a task, and thus had a tendency towards being superficially conducted. Students were more inclined to comment on negative issues, rather than critically analyse positive ones. They also tended to be more positive towards conducting the evaluation if the lecturer discussed them and/or made changes to their future lectures.

Keywords:

• student evaluations of teaching
• SETs
• virtual learning environments
• VLEs
• formative
• student motivation