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Course evaluation software released
By LORRAINE O.W. STINEBISER
Reporter
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Academic Management Systems (AMS), a software-development company located in the UB Technology Incubator, has released CoursEval™3, a Web-based evaluation tool. This new version of its well-established software provides colleges and universities with the ability to set up a wide variety of course, faculty and other assessment activities online.
CoursEval™3 is designed for campus-wide use with department-specific focus, and provides online access to survey instruments, collected data and reports displaying results in several combinations for all participants. Campuses that use CoursEval™3 can tailor surveys to their needs by drafting questionnaires rather than being confined to using a pre-determined bank of questions.
"Evaluation and feedback on courses and instructors can assist in curriculum development, accreditation activities and academic planning," said Edward Holmes, AMS director of business development for higher education. "As a direct result of the feedback from our current customer base of more than 80 schools, we continue to enhance our online system. It is flexible and customizable, accommodating different types of evaluation processes found on campuses."
CoursEval™3 displays responses and results of evaluation activities in a timely manner, underscoring the immediacy and importance of issues raised by participants. Version 3.0 features both a self-assessment and a peer-review mechanism that allows members of a group, such as students or faculty, to evaluate themselves and each other's performance. It also supports non-course-based surveys for such purposes as polling alumni, constituents within the community and groups who partner with the institution to provide experiential learning.
AMS recently completed its pilot testing of CoursEval™3 with the College of Arts and Sciences, where more than 17,000 students and 1,200 faculty members used the software.
"We used CoursEval™3 because it is designed specifically with features and flexibility to manage evaluations in a large, complex campus teaching environment such as ours," said Peter Gold, associate dean of CAS.
Gold noted that faculty members were attracted especially to the open comments feature that makes it easier for students to submit their comments and easier for instructors to read and learn from the comments, eliminating the use of paper forms that need to be transcribed. Faculty, he added, appreciated the rapid availability of the well-designed reports that include the student's written comments.
A long-time user of CoursEval is the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, which has taken the course-evaluation process one step further to evaluate different aspects of its entire program.
"We not only use the software to evaluate our courses, but we also have launched it to our alumni to get post-graduation feedback on how well the program prepared them for their careers," said Mark Sauberan, database administrator in the school.
"The system is very flexible. We have been able to use it for accreditation, admission process review, new student orientation and exit interviews," added Sauberan. "Any place where we can get feedback from our constituents about how well we are doing in educating and preparing them for their profession is an opportunity for us to improve and strengthen our pharmacy program."
The new software can be used by universities, colleges, community colleges and academic health science centers. CoursEval™3 is available currently for purchase. Institutions can request an online Webinar demonstration or an onsite visit by AMS staff. Trials of surveys also may be arranged for interested groups.
Academic Management Systems, a UB start-up company, has its roots in the School of Dental Medicine. It started as The Academic Software Collaboration, a non-profit, software company that developed computer software applications to manage admissions data for the UB dental school and other dental schools. From this collaboration grew AMS, which has since become a subsidiary of Liaison International Inc., a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in software solutions and consulting services for colleges, universities and national associations.