Conventional course evaluations consist of a standard set of questions given to the students at the end of the semester. The feedback provided by these course evaluations are often non-specific and too late to have any impact on helping the instructor to improve teaching methods. With the rapidly improving access to the internet and browsing tool availability the communication between the students and faculty can now be carried out over the world wide web. Many courses use web utilities to disseminate information to the students. We describe our efforts in utilizing the web resources to provide immediate feedback to the instructors through on-line course evaluations. Since the web browsers allow for anonymous user access the confidentially of the evaluations will remain protected.

The utility consists of HTML documents and a small suite of custom utilities or scripts which are tightly coupled with the web pages. The scripts provide access to a back-end database, and the web server provides the front-end interface to the user. Essentially, the scripts perform the database manipulation and the web pages define the look and feel of the interface. The user interface will resemble the conventional course evaluation forms with multiple choice questions. Results of the student input will be periodically updated and tabulated or graphed on the same web site. Some of the advantages of the on-line course evaluations are (i) feedback during the semester, (ii) dynamic evaluations throughout the semester, (iii) ease of access and administration, (iv) availability of customization, and (v) archiving.

Back to Table of Contents