Student evaluation surveys are an important link between students and educators. Their results, on one hand, are used to improve curriculums, education, and teaching and, on the other hand, for tenure and promotions of the university professors. Even though student evaluation surveys have been around for nearly a century, there has been relatively little research made on students’ attitudes to these surveys. Therefore, this thesis paper focuses on students’ opinion of surveys as well as on possible factors that may encourage or discourage students to provide answers and also looks for ways of improving the response rate of student evaluation surveys.
The first part is an overview of the work in this field of study and to illustrate the surveying process at the selected universities. The second, empirical part deals with a focus group and an internet survey (n=88) in which mostly students of the Faculty of social science took part (selected with convenience sampling). The analysis of the results sheds light on the whole process of filling out evaluation surveys at the University of Ljubljana. Despite some methodological limitations, it clearly shows that there are serious doubts among students regarding the anonymity of their answers. The results also show that the lack of overall information consequently creates a false impression for students that their participation in student evaluation tests is in vain because the results were not considered by the university, faculty, and professors. In the conclusion of the thesis paper, suggestions for increasing students’ endeavor on participation in these surveys are provided.
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