Administration goes survey happy on student e-mails
Justin Thrift, Staff Writer
Issue date: 4/22/09 Section: Editorials and Opinion
would significantly improve.
Many will agree that the importance of student feedback on course evaluations is an imperative piece of the University's ability to better serve the student body, so why plague students the rest of the year with less important, menial surveys
and campus solicitations?
The first step is to lessen the frequency of these annoying e-mails and irrelevant surveys. It's important that the University maintains their keen interest in hearing the student voice, but maybe a substitute method for facilitating this would better suit both the students and the administration.
Expanding a section of St. John's Central for students to log onto and offer general feedback and comments on events, policies, and other school related issues would create a nice outlet for supplementing the constant flow of electronic surveys. At a university of St. John's size, perhaps a more personal approach to student feedback
would be sufficient.
Unlike course evaluation surveys, other surveys aren't always relevant to the entire student body. Maybe the administration should survey students in person, attending specific events and adopting a more personal touch to communicating with students. For example, instead of sending a university-wide survey on the satisfaction of DNY classes, why not take a more direct approach and attend a class to hear freshmen voice their opinions in person?
If the University can succeed in cutting back on some of the e-mail traffic it produces, it would make the more important e-mails and surveys much more valid and widely read. Students can't be expected to take all the e-mails they receive seriously when they're receiving 5 or more a day.
If the administration can adopt this strategy, important e-mails such as course evaluation surveys won't be seen as annoying by a vast majority of the school community.
After all, sometimes less is more.
Many will agree that the importance of student feedback on course evaluations is an imperative piece of the University's ability to better serve the student body, so why plague students the rest of the year with less important, menial surveys
and campus solicitations?
The first step is to lessen the frequency of these annoying e-mails and irrelevant surveys. It's important that the University maintains their keen interest in hearing the student voice, but maybe a substitute method for facilitating this would better suit both the students and the administration.
Expanding a section of St. John's Central for students to log onto and offer general feedback and comments on events, policies, and other school related issues would create a nice outlet for supplementing the constant flow of electronic surveys. At a university of St. John's size, perhaps a more personal approach to student feedback
would be sufficient.
Unlike course evaluation surveys, other surveys aren't always relevant to the entire student body. Maybe the administration should survey students in person, attending specific events and adopting a more personal touch to communicating with students. For example, instead of sending a university-wide survey on the satisfaction of DNY classes, why not take a more direct approach and attend a class to hear freshmen voice their opinions in person?
If the University can succeed in cutting back on some of the e-mail traffic it produces, it would make the more important e-mails and surveys much more valid and widely read. Students can't be expected to take all the e-mails they receive seriously when they're receiving 5 or more a day.
If the administration can adopt this strategy, important e-mails such as course evaluation surveys won't be seen as annoying by a vast majority of the school community.
After all, sometimes less is more.
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