Breaking the Silence: Rethinking Student Course Evaluations in a Post-COVID World

Why Aren’t Students Filling Out Course Evaluations Anymore?

It’s a question that institutions around the globe are grappling with. Once a reliable channel for gathering feedback, course evaluations have seen sharp declines in participation since COVID-19. The old playbook of sending repeated email reminders or dangling small incentives no longer works. Students are tired, disengaged, and in many cases, skeptical that their voices matter.

At Explorance World 2025, two leaders in student evaluation brought fresh perspective to a pressing challenge. Lawrence Williams of Oregon Health & Science University and Elena Zaitseva of Liverpool John Moores University shared how they are rethinking feedback practices, blending social theory, student psychology, and technology to build a more responsive and research-driven approach.

Their framework didn’t just highlight why students stay silent but also offered practical strategies to rebuild trust and re-engage them in the feedback process.

Why Students Are Falling Silent

So why are students tuning out? The silence isn’t random, it’s the result of a handful of barriers that keep showing up across campuses. From burnout to distrust, these obstacles shed light on why traditional tactics no longer work:

• Post-COVID burnout: Students globally report higher levels of skepticism and fatigue, which translates into disengagement.
• Survey overload: With inboxes full of surveys and reminders, many students simply tune out.
• Fear of retaliation: Concerns about anonymity or potential consequences can discourage honesty.
• Perceived futility: If students believe their feedback doesn’t change anything, they won’t bother.
• Mismatch in communication: Traditional evaluation formats often clash with how students prefer to interact and share opinions.

Perhaps most striking is what the presenters called “student silence”, the unexplained lack of participation even when evaluations are accessible, anonymous, and encouraged. Understanding this silence required looking beyond logistics and into psychology.

Enter the Spiral of Silence

To make sense of the issue, the presenters turned to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s “Spiral of Silence” theory. This framework suggests that people, especially those with minority or unpopular opinions, tend to stay quiet if they feel their views aren’t supported or could be risky to express.

Applied to course evaluations, the theory sheds light on why students hesitate:

• Do they feel safe enough to be honest?
• Do they trust the system to use their input responsibly?
• Do they see peers and instructors modeling feedback as a norm?

The Spiral of Silence explains that feedback isn’t just about filling out a form, it’s about navigating trust, safety, and social signals students pick up along the way.

Reversing the Spiral: A New Framework

So how do we move from silence to voice? The answer isn’t more email reminders or flashy incentives, it’s about building a culture where students feel safe, valued, and motivated to share their experiences.

To get there, Williams and Zaitseva outlined five key strategies that institutions can use to break the silence and encourage meaningful participation:

1. Create a Perception of Safety

Students must feel protected when they share feedback. That means highlighting confidentiality settings, explaining how data is aggregated, and recognizing the unique concerns of students from different cultural or marginalized backgrounds.

2. Promote Norms of Participation

Feedback should feel like the expectation, not the exception. Students should see giving feedback as a normal, expected part of their learning experience, not something optional or unusual.

Institutions can share historical response rates, encourage faculty to talk about the importance of evaluations throughout the term, and even engage student leaders or course reps to champion participation.

3. Showcase the Impact of Feedback

Students are far more likely to engage when they see that their voices matter. Tools like Explorance MLY can surface themes in open-text responses, while “You Said, We Did” reports can highlight tangible changes made as a direct result of student input. Importantly, this isn’t about cherry-picking positive feedback, it’s about showing diverse perspectives, including neutral or critical voices.

4. Build Long-Term Trust

Feedback should not feel like a one-off event at the end of term. Instructors who maintain an ongoing dialogue with students, demonstrate openness to critique, and normalize feedback as part of the learning process create cultures where participation is more natural.

5. Prepare Students to Give Feedback

Many students don’t know who reads evaluations or how they’re used. Institutions can train students on effective feedback, clarify the evaluation process, and reframe participation as a gift to future cohorts, helping improve courses for those who come next and turning feedback into a meaningful contribution rather than just a form to fill out.

Insights From the Field

Two institutional examples illustrated how different contexts require tailored approaches:

• OHSU (Oregon Health & Science University): With centralized, mandatory evaluations, participation and response rates at OHSU remains a struggle still to see. This shows that policy alone doesn’t guarantee engagement.
• LJMU (Liverpool John Moores University): With a large undergraduate population, many from widening participation backgrounds, evaluations are optional and faculty are less directly tied to results. Here, cultural and structural differences call for alternative strategies.

Additional insights came from surveys and interviews:

• 40% of students favored incentives, especially immediate ones.
• 35% wanted clear evidence that feedback led to change.
• 25% highlighted the importance of in-class time and strong student-faculty relationships.

Meanwhile, program leaders with consistently high response rates had three things in common:

• Consistent faculty messaging
• Dedicated class time for feedback
• Strong rapport with students.

The Role of Technology

It’s tempting to think that the right platform can solve participation problems, but technology alone won’t fix student disengagement. Specialized and advanced tools like Explorance Blue and Explorance BlueX offer useful features: anonymity settings, response tracking, and eye-catching data visualizations. Yet even the slickest dashboard won’t encourage students to share their feedback if they don’t understand how it’s being used or why it matters.

The key is pairing these tools with explanation, context, and dialogue. Students are far more likely to engage when they see that feedback is taken seriously and discussed openly, rather than just collected and stored.

Moving Forward: Culture, Not Just Technology

Boosting student participation isn’t about chasing quick wins or relying solely on technology. The session made it clear that meaningful engagement comes from culture, not just tools. Students need to feel that their voices are heard, that feedback leads to real change, and that giving input is a natural part of the learning experience.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each institution must craft strategies that reflect its own student population, course structures, and cultural environment. By fostering trust, maintaining open dialogue, and consistently demonstrating the impact of feedback, schools can move beyond silence and create a culture where students are motivated to share their experiences.

The challenge is real, but so is the potential. By building trust, encouraging open dialogue, and demonstrating how feedback leads to change, institutions can break through the silence and cultivate a culture where every student’s voice truly matters. When feedback becomes part of the ongoing conversation rather than a one-off task, students feel valued, courses improve, and the learning experience is enriched for everyone, both now and for those who come next.