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As most students have realized, SETs are online this semester. We say rude awakening because this semester, if you don’t take the time out of your schedule to fill out your SETs, you won’t receive your grade for the corresponding class. Not that SETs take a long time to fill out – mine took approximately four minutes.
One pro to having SETs online is that we have more class time. That actually depends on the way you look at it, because to us that’s a con – SETs were a nice little break during class time last semester.
Another pro is that the staff and faculty can rest assured that everyone will fill their SETs out one way or another, because your grade won’t be revealed to you until you do. In all honesty, that seems a little harsh, but it’s a great system to ensure that everyone fills out their SETs.
The cons are neatly tied into the pros here. Sure, it saves class time, but from a student’s point of view, that isn’t really good. And sure, it enforces the rule that everyone has to fill them out, holding your grade as collateral, but that is just going to lead to issues because some students will miss the memo, delete the e-mail, forget to fill them out, and so forth. This is just going to lead to way more trouble than it’s worth in order to work it out so those students can get their grades.
Another problem that we have with online SETs, or SETs in general, is that some professors themselves don’t take them seriously. One of my professors – let’s not name drop – thinks they’re a joke and never reads the ones written about his or her class. Most students don’t take them seriously, either.
The new online format allows you to submit your survey without answering all of the written questions. We left many of them blank because we were unsure of what to say – if you want feedback you should probably make the surveys require all fields to be filled out. This just allows people to submit half-filled-out, half-BS surveys.
Feedback is great, it’s what makes progress possible, but if you want feedback, do it right. Ask real questions that students need to answer instead of just “fill in this bubble” or “click your mouse here,” and require those answers instead of making them optional because you aren’t likely to get much back that way. And keep SETs within the classroom. It’s easier for people to take it more seriously that way, instead of just rushing through it online in order to be allowed to see your grade.
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