CSU-Pueblo has undergone a change this semester pertaining to the way students evaluate their instructors.

The process of rating teachers through Scantron bubble-sheets has been changed to an online form of evaluation.

Students will be required to log on to their individual PAWs accounts to rank their instructors through a provided third-party Web site.

The actual evaluation questions have remained the same, but the process has been significantly improved.

The Web site streamlines the process by collecting an individual student’s complete course schedule on one page, allowing them to rank each of their instructors at the same time. What used to take 15 minutes out of every class hour can now be completed in 5 minutes.

Furthermore, student errors, such as improperly filled Scantron sheets, will be a thing of the past because of the electronic nature of the evaluation. Smudged or halfway marked bubbles will no longer cause a problem for finicky machinery.

The biggest improvement, however, is the confidentiality of the students’ evaluations.  With hard copies of the Scantrons, the evaluations had to pass through many hands, from creation to disposal, which increased the risk of student opinions being spied on.  Electronically, the third-party Web site handles all evaluations.

Sharon Hatton Montoya, the director of Student Academic Services, said that the anonymity of the student identity was one of the major reasons for the change in evaluations. Another was to bring the evaluation process into the new century as Scantron technology is quickly becoming obsolete.

Theoretically, the only problem with the system is that it is completely up to the student to log-on to the Web site instead of the evaluations being a mandatory part of the class-hour.  

Montoya, however, showed enthusiasm for the new system stating that they have already received a large percentage of evaluations from students after making them available yesterday.

Montoya also said that by making them optional on the student’s part, the evaluations will be more sincere as the student will be making a conscious effort to evaluate their instructor as opposed to being a mandatory requirement.

Provost Russell Meyer said he is excited about the new evaluations, and said that in the future even more improvements could be made, such as informal evaluations midway through the semester that would allow instructors to make changes in the classroom when a problem is apparent, instead of waiting to find out at the end of the semester.

The new and improved course evaluations are available now and will be open for submission until May 5^th, so students will need to hurry if they want their opinions heard.