Online Course and Teaching Evaluation System (OCTE)
With effect from 2019-20, all courses should implement Online CTE in class, except courses that were not conducted in classrooms, for examples in the case of field trips where there might be restricted internet access in the field.
The Reasons
The Changes
Anonymity
The Reasons
Administrative efficiency – at least 3,000 man-days can be saved each year by automation.
Green – at least a quarter of a million of papers can be saved each year.
Reduce human errors – the manual process which can be error-prone is replaced by automation.
Teaching quality – the programme-specific questions can be set more easily by self-service.
Outdated process – CUHK (except the Law Faculty and the MBChB Programme) is one of the only two out of the eight UGC-funded institutions that are still using paper-based CTE.
The Changes
The intended change will be limited to the replacement of paper forms by online forms. The consequences of the change are as follows.
Students will complete the survey in online forms rather than papers using electronic devices such as mobile phones and tablets.
The students’ input will be collected by the system automatically rather than by a human.
The processing of the data inputs, including extraction of comments and computation of the results, will be carried out by computer. Manual processing of the forms will be eliminated.
Otherwise, all existing policies and procedures remain unchanged.
Anonymity
The following measures will be used to ensure that the identity of the respondent will not be traceable.
CUHK does not collect the data – The submitted data is collected directly by the vendor’s system (EvaluationKit – www.evaluationkit.com). CUHK does not collect the data.
Confidentiality by contract - Vendor, who collects the data, is not allowed, by contract, to provide any information that could reveal the identity of a respondent to CUHK under any circumstances.
Vendor must delete data after use – Vendor must delete, by contract, all the collected and processed data two weeks after the termination of the survey. After the two-week period, the data will be deleted permanently and will be non-recoverable. Survey results that do not contain personally identifiable information will be transferred from vendor site to CUHK site, and will be retained based on existing policies and practices.
Guest account – The system supports survey based on guest accounts so that students can complete the evaluation without using any personally identifiable information.
University policies – All existing policies used to protect the anonymity and rights of students, such as no CTE for the small classes, will continue to apply.
