Course Evaluation: From Rag (paper) to Riches

Presentation Summary

Ed Stemmler and William McManus; University of Pennsylvania

Course Evaluation: From Rag (paper) to Riches

In 2008, the University of Pennsylvania undertook a change, converting from a paper-based, labor intensive Course Evaluation process to an on-line system. Evaluations of undergraduate courses had been managed by two of the undergrad schools at Penn, results scanned, collated on a mainframe and loaded to Penn's data warehouse. The on-line project streamlined the process, loading course, student, and instructor data from our student data collection and enabling 10 schools to run their own evaluations. The architecture of the on-line system required some clever revisions to the ETL process and data model, moving from a static format to one supportive of a dynamic format. The presentation will review the project and goals, the modifications to the legacy reporting schema, the improvements achieved through the dynamic formatting and improved data model and, the results of using on-line evaluations. Penn's evaluation process continues to expand and evolve, with school, departmental and instructor based questions, something only made possible by the changes to the data model.