A new online teacher evaluation system at OU is said to save time and money, but some professors fear it could do their careers more harm than good.

“A lot of my students don’t fill the evaluations out even when I give it to them on paper. I can’t believe they would take the time to do it outside the classroom,” marketing professor Jeff Schmidt said at the March 9 Faculty Senate meeting.

Zoology professor Laurie Vitt agreed response rates are a problem, but he said summer 2008 trial runs of the new system, called eValuate, show the response rates should improve over time as students get used to it.

Many professors support moving teacher evaluations online as long as students have some type of incentive to complete them, like giving bonus points or withholding grade reports until the evaluation is complete.

Communications senior Kaitlyn Boswell said she would not fill out the evaluations unless she had a strong opinion about the professor.

Some instructors feel if this were to happen, they would lose a lot of constructive criticism from students.

Teacher evaluations also are considered in determining promotions and salary increases. A foreign language instructor who chose to remain anonymous said employers for other schools request to see evaluations from instructors’ previous students before deciding whether to hire them.

Kelly Damphousse, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said while some universities use incentives like bonus points to encourage students to complete evaluations, the College of Arts and Sciences does not support giving grade incentives. He suggested faculty simply continue to inform students of why evaluations are important.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the first college on campus to transition evaluations online, Damphousse said. Professors can supplement the online evaluations by passing out their own paper evaluations.

Damphousse said the online system will save the college nearly $10,000 in paper costs per semester.

“I don’t think anyone understood how much time and paper costs the institution,” Damphousse said. “With staff having to move paper from place to place, move evaluations, put them in mailboxes, there was just a lot of staff time and classroom time used, so the online system is intended to solve a lot of those problems.”

Some professors at the March 9 Faculty Senate meeting also expressed concern about added stress on OU IT if the system went online.

Nicholas Key, OU IT spokesman, said it is difficult to determine the impact the switch will have on OU IT at this time.

Log on to eval.ou.edu April 28 through May 7 to fill out teacher evaluations for classes in the College of Arts and Sciences.