Spring 2022 Academic Feedback

The Takeaway

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At the end of each semester, we survey students to assess course quality and student satisfaction. Over 520 students provided feedback this Spring, which will help us continue to improve future courses. Some of the high-level takeaways included:

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💡 92% of students found courses to be as good or better than other online courses they have taken. 55% of students rated their course strictly better than other online courses.

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💡 79% of students found courses to be as good or better than on-campus courses they have taken. 51% of students rated their course strictly better than on-campus courses.

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💡 Asked how likely they would be to recommend their course to a classmate, the average student responded 7.7 / 10.0. The most common rating was 10/10, representing one-third of all students.

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Survey Detail

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Beyond these general measures of satisfaction, we ask students to provide feedback on a variety of course elements. Unless otherwise specified in the question, all results are based on a scale of 1-7 where 1 was “Strongly Disagree”, 4 was “Neutral”, and 7 was “Strongly Agree”.

Each column represents a different semester of survey results, showing clear improvements and all-time high results for the Spring semester of 2022 across nearly every measure.

Measurable Improvements

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We’ve taken meaningful steps forward as a result of the feedback received from students in the Fall 2021 surveys, and we continue to listen to students to better understand what can be improved. All of the below changes were implemented this past semester to directly respond to prior student feedback:

What Students Are Loving

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The projects and assignments

• “We get to work on projects that seem to have useful applications and not just random work.”
• “The assignments helped me tap into my creative side.”
• “My favorite part was the assignments that really make you think.”
• “The content has been very stimulating and enjoyable.”

Enjoyable live class time

• “The discussions we had in class. They were really engaging and I liked how we used real life issues to complete some of the assignments.”
• “The fun class times and going over the homework and projects so it’s not super confusing.”

The flexibility of optional-synchronous

• “Flexibility with the course and being able to work on my schedule to be able to learn.”
• “I liked how the class was all online and it gave us time to do the homework assignments on my own”
• Interacting and collaborating with students from other colleges
• “I enjoy getting to interact with my classmates through discussion posts. It’s a great way to feel connected with each other even though the class is online.”
• “Being able to be creative and craft our own work while interacting with people we don’t know.”

The structure and layout of the course in Canvas

• “The online platform allows you to learn in your own way as well as provide a good level of freedom.”
• “The Rize course was set up very well, and had an easy format for an online course.”

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What Students Want More Of

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The largest themes of our improvements this semester are creating more flexibility for students in how they engage with the courses and increasing industry and guest speaker involvement. For each item that students would like improved, we have acted with a planned-and-deployed solution in order to continue to remain on-top of the course developments and updates students are looking for.

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