“The system knows which students have evaluations remaining so that is the list that a lot of those targeted e-mails have been going to,” Chadbourne said.

Critics also worry that large lecture courses’ response rates will suffer under the new system, since students will no longer be encouraged to complete forms by hand in small sections.

Yesterday, a random survey taken by The Crimson revealed that of 15 courses containing 150 people or more, only one, Biological Sciences 50, had a response rate of 60 percent or more.

Kane said that he expects to reach the 60 percent overall goal, and added that online CUE evaluations would streamline the process for students, faculty, and administrators.

In an interview Monday, Kane said that evaluations at Yale, where he served as Registrar until 2003, have a 90 percent response rate, which he credits in part to the administrative decision to prevent students from viewing grades online until they have completed evaluations.

Gross wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson yesterday that the CUE chose not to punish students who neglected to submit evaluations, opting instead to “appeal to the important role students play in evaluating all forms of teaching.”

Chadbourne voiced his excitement about the “non-coercive campaign” but said that other measures may be necessary in the future.

“If it turns out that Harvard students are too busy and have other priorities, the Committee should talk about other ways to encourage or maybe require participation,” Chadbourne said.

—Margaret W. Ho and Rebecca D. O’Brien contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Alison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.