Re-Evaluating Course Evaluations: Clarity, Visibility, and Functionality

This article presents an innovative framework that provides a means to understand and reevaluate student course evaluation systems. We present three major concepts vital to course evaluation systems and explain how they inform five evolutionary stages. Additionally, we show how the major stakeholders--students, faculty and administrators--are impacted in each evolutionary stage. This framework allows for development of student course evaluation systems from one where procedures are simply followed, to one where feedback is available and used in real time. The framework also provides a means to critically evaluate and re-evaluate current and future course evaluation systems.