Introduction

Find out how Tiffany Martinez, an administrative secretary at the University of New Haven’s Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Department, completed a project that took over in the past in about a month with the help of Remark Office OMR.

Background

Our unique combination of chemistry and chemical engineering in a single department provides a stimulating environment for students and faculty to interact with ideas and projects that involve both fundamental chemical principles and practical engineering applications of chemistry. The chemical engineering major is fully accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Throughout the curriculum, we provide up-to-date computer control and data acquisition equipment combined with the same computer process design software used in industry.

The Challenge

Processing course and instructor evaluations in a timely, cost-effective manner. Tiffany used to enter these evaluations into an Excel sheet manually. With the amount of classes and students per class it took her over a year to process the evaluations using her manual method. She needed a way to streamline her effort and a more rapid turnaround of results so instructors could improve their courses for the next semester.

The Solution

Tiffany selected Remark Office OMR because she was able to create and use her own forms for the course and instructor evaluations. She says, “It was so simple to use.”

Tiffany says, “I have been able to process course and instructor evaluations for approximately 84 classes and 1,856 student responses. I used my desktop scanner and Remark Office OMR. I started in late December 2009 and was finished by late January. I am so pleased as the same job took me over a year in the past, which sometimes is useless because the instructors didn’t have time for improvement.”

She reduced their course evaluation turnaround time by 11 months and most importantly the instructors didn’t have to wait for results so that they could improve for the next semester/term. Tiffany even had time left to focus on more important things instead of spending her time hand-entering information.

Tiffany’s Process

Her form consists of three to four pages. The first two pages of the course and instructor evaluation are pretty much generic across all courses she is responsible for evaluating. The third and possible fourth pages are all related to specific objectives and outcomes of a course.

She creates the paper form and after the paper form is created, she then creates the Remark template. Once she has a template created she tests it with a couple test paper forms to ensure her scanner can read it effectively. She uses a Xerox Documate 152 scanner to scan in her completed forms.

After the forms have been tested, they are printed and distributed to instructors who then distribute them to the students to evaluate their instructors and courses. The students return the evaluations in a sealed envelope to her office where she processes the evaluations using the Remark Office OMR software. The software provides the results via Remark Quick Stats®. Tiffany likes to use the CIAR (Condensed Item Analysis Report) for the quantitative information and response reports to read the handwritten comments.

Tiffany says, “Overall I am pleased. Remark has saved me so much time.”

Tiffany is looking forward to using Remark Office OMR for grading tests as well.