Information for the Teaching Staff

Evaluations at Münster School for Business and Economics will switch to an online method. With this change, there are a few things that we need your cooperation with to ensure a problem-free execution.

Directions for online evaluations for lecturers

Evaluations at School for Business and Economics will switch to an online method. With this change, there are a few things that we need your cooperation with to ensure a problem-free execution.

Checklist for correct execution (more detailed explanations below)

  • All of my lectures are correctly assigned to me.
  • All lectures have Learnweb courses and all students are enrolled in those.
  • The evaluation period has begun. The evaluation coordinator Dr. Ulrike Augustin normally informs about the beginning of the period at the beginning of the semester.
  • Under "Add a block" I clicked the “EvaSys Sync” button and then "Show status of survey". In a new window I specified the time span for the evaluation and I assigned other courses (if necessary, e.g.  the turorial) I clicked the "Request evaluation" button (and automatically notified Dr. Augustin with it)
  • I informed the students about the evaluation in the lecture and showed them the information slide
  • I have received my result sheet.

Detailed process chain of the evaluation process

Please click here to display the image of the process chain. The steps pertaining to you are marked in red and explained further below.

Explanations of the various steps of the process chain

In order for the evaluation process to work flawlessly, the following points have to be considered:

Check lecture index for errors

The dean’s office normally sends the lecture index to the lecturers before the beginning of the new semesters so the contents can be checked. Should there be any wrong information, please have this corrected. Please contact the person responsible (at the moment: Petra von Oppenkowski). This way we can ensure that the evaluations are conducted by the right person and that the results reach the right person. Should errors arise during the semester, please directly contact the evaluation coordinator Dr. Ulrike Augustin.

Create Learnweb course for the lecture / exercise / seminar

At the beginning of the semester, lecturers or the assigned research assistants are requested to create Learnweb courses for their university events. Those are mandatory for the online evaluation as students are synchronized with our survey system with them. In courses that can be assigned to more than one module (e.g. specialisation modules in Information Systems), identical naming conventions ensure that every participant of a course can evaluate.

Ask students to enrol in the Learnweb course

The students have to be enrolled in the learnweb courses to be able to evaluate online. Since students can enrol after some time has passed or still disenrol if they decide not to participate, the synchronisation should be executed after some time has passed in the new semester for the number of participants to consolidate.

Click “EvaSys Sync” under "Add a block" and after that request evaluation

The new Learnweb module is responsible for the synchronisation with EvaSys and makes it possible for students to fill in surveys with the app. The following steps have to be done:

  1. Please click the following buttons "Add a block" and "EvaSys Sync" and "Show Status of evaluation". The synchronisation module is loaded and a new window will pop up.
  2. Please add now your desired evaluation time span. The beginning should be on the day, you want to evaluate. Frau Dr. Augustin will implement your wish in the system. AFter the evaluation is closed, oyu will automatically get the report.
  3. For courses, where you have only one learnweb-course, but the course itself is split up, e.g. in a lecture and a tutorial, you can now assign the other courses for the synchronization with EvaSys. The assignment can only be done once and only before the first synchronization with EvaSys. The assignment also is only possible, when you are the lecturer of all courses.
  4. After that click "Request evaluation" the evaluation coordinator (at the moment: Dr. Ulrike Augustin) is notified that the pertaining course is open for evaluation. The evaluation coordinator implements the evaluation and the e-mails to the students will be sent out at the desired date. With this, students are reminded about the evaluation and are able to open it via web browser.

Inform about evaluation during the lecture

As usual, one should take a period of time out of a lecture to let students fill in the forms. Please find below this paragraph information slides that contain a short instruction for evaluating via the app. Students without Android or Apple devices are requested to follow the link in their inbox to open the survey.

It is important to stress the anonymity of the evaluation to prevent concerns about privacy and data security. The developer of the system, Electric Paper, guarantees anonymization. The transaction numbers for opening surveys are randomly generated and leave no trace as to who received which one. All data (except for comments) are sent to the lecturers in averages.

Here are the downloads for the information slides:

Faculty layout (Business/Economics) - German

Faculty layout (Business/Economics) - English

ERCIS Layout (Information Systems) - German

ERCIS Layout (Information Systems) - English

At the end of the evaluation period, the result sheet will be sent to the lecturers by the evaluation coordinator as usual.

Bases

What follows is some information about the statutory bases of quality audits, the way in which such audits are conducted, and the appraisal sheets which are used to elicit value judgments from students.

Statutory Bases

  • The assessment regulations of the University of Münster provide that teaching standards should be assessed at regular intervals by students.
  • As the personal data of both students and academic staff have to be processed, data protection guidelines have been drawn up.

The Assessment System

  • Data are processed by means of a software package called EvaSys. This software has been installed on a central server in the Centre for Information Processing, and it is used on scanning stations in each of the University’s departments.
  • In Department 4 the technical implementation of the assessment is overseen by the evaluation coordinator, who works together with the Student Coun­cil.

The Questionnaires

New appraisal sheets were introduced in the winter semester 2012/13. Each appraisal sheet consists of a basic section – 13 questions all told – and modules which vary with the nature of the course that is to be assessed. The appraisal sheets are modelled on question schedules developed by psychologists working at the University of Münster. Considered from a methodological viewpoint, the chief characteristic of the questionnaires is what is known as feedback orientation, i.e. all the questions are framed in such a way as to elicit respondents’ subjective impressions. Thus, for instance, a student can tick a box to indicate to what extent the course he/she attended provided a satisfactory overview of the topics that were covered. Psychologists have checked the appraisal sheets for reliability and validity.

Specimen appraisal sheets can be found here. There is one for a lecture, one for a tutorial, and one for a seminar.