1. The Rate-a-Course System
The research team:
Amanda Stent
Svetlana Stenchikova
Sarah Hoffman
Richard Gerrig
Matthew Marge

2. What might be an optimal way to acquire course
feedback from students?
We could imagine interviewing them and probing
their responses.
How close can we get?

3. 48 participants called the system (in the laboratory)
and evaluated two courses.
They had the opportunity to provide information
about the instructor, exams, class size, assignments,
and teaching assistant.

4. In each case, there was a fixed response question
followed by an open-ended question:
“Is the instructor very good, good, okay, bad, or
very bad?”
“He was good.”
“Why did you think the instructor was good?”

5. Initiative Conditions
1. System: Speaker discusses all course topics in
a randomized order.
2. Mixed: Speaker chooses order to discuss all
course topics.
3. User: Speaker chooses which topics to discuss
and chooses order

10. The data suggest that participants who could
restrict the topics they discussed chose to ignore
topics toward which they had a neutral attitude.
In addition, they expended the least amount of
effort on negative aspects of courses.

11. The data suggest that participants who could
restrict the topics they discussed chose to ignore
topics toward which they had a neutral attitude.
In addition, they expended the least amount of
effort on negative aspects of courses.
Is this a response to demand characteristics?

12. The data suggest that participants who could
restrict the topics they discussed chose to ignore
topics toward which they had a neutral attitude.
In addition, they expended the least amount of
effort on negative aspects of courses.
Is this a response to demand characteristics?
Even so, participants who had full initiative provided
different information from their peers.