| Note |
|---|
You cannot see which individual students have completed evaluations; you can only see how many students in your classes have completed evaluations. Please only use incentives that rely on whole class response rates. |
Tips on Using Incentives
Class-wide incentives are as, or more, effective than individual incentives. They are also far easier to administer. Class-wide incentives provide the reward to all students if the class reaches a certain threshold percentage response.
High class-wide response thresholds work best--80% to 90% present an achievable challenge.
Small incentives work just fine. For example, give a few extra credit points to all students, allow students to bring some notes to the final, or drop their low quiz or homework assignment.
Notify students of the class response rate part way through the evaluation period.
Incentives are used in survey research to increase response rates and provide responders with some small compensation for their time (Dillman, Smyth, & Melani Christian, 2014). They work the same to
encourage students taking course evaluations.Research has shown that even very small incentives, like one-quarter of 1% added to a final grade, can be very effective in improving response rates in course evaluations (Donmeyer, Baum, Hanna, &
Chapman, 2004; Wode & Keiser, 2011). Gains in response rates of 15% to 20% when using incentives are common (Wode & Keiser, 2011).Incentives do not have to involve points to be effective. Research at Boise State demonstrated that non-point incentives were found to work as well or better than point-based (Goodman, Anson, & Belcheir, 2015). The same research showed that class-wide incentives are the easiest to administer and are most effective when the class is challenged to reach at least 85% or 90% response.A good plan for achieving a high response rate includes setting a high threshold for responses, requiring 85% or 90% response from the class, in order to receive a class-wide incentive. Announcing the response rate to the class once or twice during the evaluation period will help encourage responses as well.
About incentives in the faculty’s own words:
...