New system to facilitate evaluation and analysis of courses

"The main purpose of the change is that it will contribute to course development and lead to a better fulfilment of the Higher Education Ordinance. We will be better at taking care of the courses that do not work. We have lacked a good system for this," says Sofia Ritzén, Dean of Faculty of KTH.

‘Positively surprised’

The new system has been tested in pilot rounds during period 1 and 2 and is now fully launched on all KTH courses. Mattias Höjer is Professor in Environmental strategies and futures studies and teaches courses at bachelor's and master's level in sustainability and digitalisation. He was involved in testing the system during the autumn of 2024 and has during the spring conducted a course evaluation and a course analysis.

He is pleasantly surprised and finds the evaluation questionnaire much more useful than the one used before.

"I think this one is great for both me and the students. The previous questionnaire was too complicated and too academic and tricky. I'm not sure if the students even understood it. It was too long and we got a very low response rate, which made it completely unusable for us. The new survey has a few short questions with an opportunity for comments. That combination is very good," Höjer says.

Goes out automatically

In the new system, the teacher receives an email telling him/her that a course evaluation will go out automatically to the students. The teacher has the option to set the date and add their own questions to the standard questions.

Based on a compilation of the course evaluation questionnaire, the teacher makes an analysis in the tool. Students can then view the results in Canvas, and parts of the analysis are then posted on the web in the course information for each course. Future students can read the teacher's reflections on what worked well with the course and what will be changed in the next round.

‘Gives students the right idea’

According to the Higher Education Ordinance, all students must be given the opportunity to give feedback on a course and be informed of the outcome of the evaluation.

"Students listen to each other a lot. If a course hasn't worked well, they've heard it from older students. It's good for them to know that teachers have taken note of their comments and done something about them. Then we have shown that we are working on course development and give the students the right idea when they start the course themselves," Ritzén says.

Text: Sabina Fabrizi