Electronic Course Surveys: does automating feedback and reporting give better results?

This paper discusses an electronic course survey system designed to support evaluation of a modular programme in management taught through distance education. The scale and communication issues raised by distance education, when compounded by a complex rolling modular programme, make conventional evaluation complicated, slow and expensive. To overcome these problems, an automated evaluation process was introduced, partly based on web-based surveying, but significantly emphasising the reporting process and allowing performance indicators and complex analyses to be embedded in high quality word-processed reports, that can be quickly and easily generated after each presentation of a module. The paper discusses the system and the impact that it has had on the evaluation process, before looking to future opportunities for developments in this field, and discussing some of the implications - both expected and unanticipated - that have come out of using automation in the evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]