Response Rates

In the summer of 2007, Embry-Riddle began its migration from paper course evaluations to an online system. With a successful launch at our Worldwide campus (150+ teaching centers and online courses), our two residential campuses (Daytona Beach, FL, and Prescott, AZ) went live for Fall 2007 evaluations with response rates in the low 60%’s. Our Worldwide centers had more variable response rates (20% to 50%) depending on course delivery mode (teaching center (ground) or virtual classrooms (online)). During the first year of online evaluations, incentives were offered (gift cards, iPods, GPS, etc) and heavy advertising took place. With budget constraints, incentives were discontinued and advertising tapered off.

One year out, our residential campuses response rates began to decline (53% and 57% respectively) as did response rates for our Worldwide campuses (25-30% ground, 45-50% online). At this time we re-evaluated our course evaluation system and moved to a system that had more flexibility in reports and administrative tools and a more user friendly dashboard. Fall 2009 online evaluations had their own challenges – the rollout of a new vendor system, retraining of faculty to the new system and bad timing of a new email system to the entire student body. Response rates plummeted to an unacceptable level of 30% & 50% for our residential campuses.