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Course Evaluation – Faculty FAQ

Student Ratings of Instruction – Faculty FAQ

 

Frequently Asked Questions about Class Climate Survey System and the Student Ratings of Instruction (SRI)

How do I access results?

  • You may access SRI results by clicking on the Student Ratings of Instruction link in any one of your Blackboard courses. Results are available when the administration closes.

How do I access results from previous quarters?

  • You may view results from previous quarters by clicking on the Student Ratings of Instruction link in any one of your Blackboard courses. There is a limit to the number of quarters that will be kept on Blackboard, for previously collected data, please contact the Director of Institutional Effectiveness for assistance.

When are results available?

  • University policy prohibits anyone from seeing evaluation results until grades have been submitted and finalized through Colleague. Evaluation results are generally available at 8 a.m. on Monday of Week 1.
  • If you were evaluated for a course that ended early in the quarter, you will need to wait until after all quarter grades have been submitted to view results.

How am I notified about my results?

  • You will receive an automated email with a link to the evaluation site once results have been released for the current quarter.

Who has access to the evaluation results?

  • Each instructor who was evaluated has access to responses for all questions concerning individual instructors and the course in which they were evaluated. Senior administration, deans and department/division heads also have access to results for all courses and instructors under their supervision.
  • Departments may grant access for results of select course evaluations to other individuals, at the approval of the department/division head.

When Do Evaluations Run?

  • The evaluations run for all courses during weeks 8,9,10 and 11 on the academic calendar.
  • Evaluations begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday of the 8th week and end at 11:59 p.m. on Friday of week 0.

How do I know whether students are responding?

  • Real-time response rate updates are available in Blackboard. There you can find the number of students who have submitted responses out of the expected total of students enrolled.

Can I see which students have completed evaluations?

  • Names of individual students who have completed evaluations are not released to instructors.
  • Students can self-report completion of a survey, by taking a screenshot of the completion page and emailing it to the instructor.

Why are there no comments on my evaluations?

  • The comments section is not required but optional for students. It is possible no students provided feedback and if the required threshold was not met for student response rate, a message will be provided alerting you to this.

Can I see how an individual commenter responded to the Likert-scale questions?

  • In an effort to protect student confidentiality, links between written comments and quantitative responses are not provided.
  • Instructors may request an Excel output for an individual course where written comments are linked to quantitative responses by emailing the course and section number, instructor name and quarter to Effectiveness@LIFE.edu

Why wasn’t my course evaluated?

  • Your course may have an enrollment below 5 students, which is the threshold for statistically reliable results.
  • Independent study courses are generally not reviewed.

Response rates improve when:

  • Students know that their responses are important and will be used
  • Evaluations are administered the week prior to the last week of teaching
  • Someone other than the faculty member administers the evaluation
  • Students are assured and receive confidentiality/anonymity

Additional information on Administration Guidelines

  • Share with students the significance of their participation and how the information will be used. Demonstrate to students how feedback is used (e.g., share in syllabus an example of how student evaluation helped to improve the course (Chen & Hoshower, 2003; Svinicki, 2001).