Table of Contents
Currently, all courses are evaluated, regardless of enrollment, except those excluded by the college via the evaluation administrator. Starting in fall 2025, all courses except research (RSC) and tutorial (TUT) will be evaluated, regardless of enrollment. In order to protect student anonymity, instructors do not receive results reports for classes with fewer than five students. An evaluation survey is launched two (2) weeks before the published last day of the course. Instructors and students are notified of the evaluation launch by an email sent from CourseEvaluations@ohio.edu. The student version of the email contains a link to the survey. Instructors and students may also access evaluations using any of these methods:
- Select the Course Evaluations link in the Canvas course menu.
- If you don't see this link in your Canvas course, you may have hidden it (see Canvas evaluation link section below).
- Select the Account icon at the top of the green menu along the left of Canvas, then select the Course Evaluations link on the slide-out panel.
- Sign into Blue directly at https://my-ohio.bluera.com (select the SAML button to authenticate).
In addition to the above, instructors may share the evaluation link or QR code in class. Throughout the evaluation period, instructors can monitor response rates (though not view the contents of responses) in Blue. Currently, three (3) days after the evaluation begins, Blue sends a reminder email to students who have not yet responded to the survey. Four (4) days before the evaluation ends, Blue sends a second reminder email to students who have not yet responded. In addition to these two reminders, instructors may also generate reminder emails at will. Students will stop receiving reminder emails after they've submitted the evaluations. Upon submission, students receive a 'thank you for your feedback' message on screen only.
Evaluation surveys are open for two (2) weeks, concluding at 11:59 PM on the published course end date, and no further responses are accepted after this time. If you are unsure of a course end date, you can find it in the Faculty & Advising Center and in the Course Offerings Search.
Starting in fall 2025, the evaluation period will be reduced to one (1) week, with the surveys opening two (2) weeks before the course end date and closing one (1) week before the course end date (before final exams begin). This change is planned to comply with course evaluation standardization resolutions passed by Faculty Senate in spring of 2025.
After final grades are due for the term, instructors receive an email from Blue containing links to the evaluation results report in Blue and to the Blue Course Evaluations Dashboard in PowerBI. Instructors may also find past results reports at any time by signing into Blue directly (see "View all reports" link in My Reports widget) or via the Blue Course Evaluations Dashboard in PowerBI.
You can access your course evaluation status in Blue by
- Using the link provided in your email
OR
Monitor evaluation response rate
You can view the response percentage for your course in the response rate circle.
- Log into Blue
- Once on the Home page, you can view response rates for your active tasks in the My Active Tasks widget
- You can view the response percentage for your course in the response rate circle
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Blackboard evaluation link
You can add a course evaluation link to your Blackboard course for students to log directly into Blue.
Blackboard Original
- Navigate to your Blackboard course
- In the upper left of the course menu, select the + icon
- Select Course Link
- Select Browse
- Scroll the menu and select Course Evaluations
- Check the Available to Users check box
- Select Submit
- Use the Student Preview feature to verify the “Course Evaluations” link has been added
- Inform your students that the course evaluation is available in the course menu
- Repeat this process for each course that will be evaluated this semester
Blackboard Ultra
- Navigate to the course
- In the Details and Actions menu, select View course & institution tools under Books & Tools
- Select the + symbol next to Course Evaluations (be sure to select the + and not the words “Course Evaluations”
- The Course Evaluations link will be added to the bottom of the Course Content page, but will be hidden from students
- Make the Course Evaluations link visible to students
- Use the Student Preview feature to verify the Course Evaluations link is present and visible to students
- Inform students where to find the evaluation link in your course
- The Blue Connector Tool is now available for all students enrolled in that course
- Repeat this process for each course that will be evaluated this semester
Canvas evaluation link
Confirm course evaluation link
The course evaluation link will appear automatically in your Canvas course, but you should confirm that the link is present and visible to students before the evaluation period begins.
- Navigate to your Canvas course
- Check the white course navigation menu on the left and confirm that the Course Evaluations link is present
Hide course evaluation link
If your course will not be evaluated in Blue, you can hide the link from students.
- Navigate to your Canvas course
- In the white course navigation menu at the left, scroll down to the bottom and select Settings
- On the Settings page select Navigation
- On the Navigation page, select the Course Evaluations item and drag it down to the bottom section labeled “Drag items here to hide them from students”
- Select Save
- The Course Evaluations link will no longer be visible in your course navigation menu
Provide evaluation link to students
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- Create a QR Code
- Select the ellipsis (…) on the course you are interested in
- Select View QR Code
- Select View QR Code on pop up screen
- You can copy and paste this link to display to students
- Generate a link
- Select the ellipsis (…) on the course you are interested in
- Select View QR Code
- Copy the link and paste into your desired communication
- Send a reminder email
- Select the ellipsis (…) on the course you are interested in
- Select View Respondents
- Select Resend invitation emails to all raters who have not yet submitted
- You should see a confirmation message that your email has been sent
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Accessing reports
- Automated reports are sent to instructors via email for every course once grades have been submitted for full term courses.
- This includes courses that run for less than 15 weeks.
- An email will be sent from Blue with a link to access your individual reports for courses that have at least 5 students enrolled and for which the evaluation has received at least 1 response.
- In order to preserve student anonymity, course results reports will not be generated for sections with fewer than 5 students enrolled, however, responses from these courses will be aggregated into departmental and college reports for academic leadership.
- In some cases, response data for sections with small enrollments may be combined with data for larger sections in the Blue Course Evaluations Dashboard (see below). Contact your college/school/department evaluation administrator for assistance with determining whether a class qualifies for a combined report.
- In addition to accessing past reports in Blue, you can download a PDF or CSV copy of your reports for archival purposes.
- Select the link in the email to access your report.
- In the top left of your report, you will see the option to download in either PDF or CSV format.
- Reports can also be obtained by visiting https://my-ohio.bluera.com/.
- Please note this link only works after you have received the email notification that your reports are ready.
- Once on the Home page, your most recent reports will be available in the My Reports widget located at the bottom of the page. Select the View all reports link to see additional reports, including those for past evaluation periods.
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The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has developed a PowerBI report dashboard to provide instructors and academic leadership with access to more robust reporting of evaluation data. Instructors will continue to receive the automated reports emails from Blue for individual course results reports.
Accessing the dashboard
- The first time you access the dashboard, you will need to use the direct link that is provided in the automated report notification emails received from Blue (CourseEvaluations@ohio.edu) after the evaluation period ends and term grades are submitted. This link will 'install' the Course Evaluations Dashboard app in your PowerBI reports (does not install anything on your device).
- After your first time accessing the dashboard, you may continue to use the direct link, or you can open the dashboard from the PowerBI site:
- Once you've signed into PowerBI with your Ohio account, select Apps from the menu along the left, and then select the Course Evaluations Dashboard app in your PowerBI Apps list.
Navigating the dashboard
- Use the menu along the left to navigate between the Welcome page and the Instructor Pages section, which includes the Summary View, and the Question Details pages.
- Welcome is a landing page with some basic information and navigation instructions.
- Summary View displays response rates and overall averages for courses and terms, including how averages trend over time.
- Question Details displays response option rate, number of responses, and mean score for each question on the evaluation form.
- On the Summary View and Question Details pages, you'll find various Slicers (drop-down menus) that you can use to filter the displayed data. The available slicers include the following variables:
- Term (terms evaluated in Blue)
- Campus
- College
- Department
- Career (graduate or undergraduate course)
- Component (course type)
- Delivery Type (in-person or online)
- Instructor Name (can only by filtered by academic leadership or admins)
- Class Section
- Question Section
- Question
- Note that, depending on your level of access, you may not have options for all visible slicers.
- By default, only data for the most recent term is displayed; data for additional terms can be selected with the Term slicer.
- If you select a course from the Class Section slicer, but no data is displayed, the selected course section did not have at least five students enrolled.
- If you do not see a section as an option in the Class Section slicer, either the evaluation did not receive any responses or an evaluation did not take place.
- The filters are 'sticky,' so when you return to the dashboard, the slicers selected during your previous session are still in place.
- If you are seeing unexpected values in the data or in the slicer options, select the Clear all slicers button at the top right of the dashboard to reset all of the slicers and start again.
- Export Data
- You can export data from the dashboard by hovering over the desired content and selecting the ellipsis menu (...), then choosing Export Data.
Considerations
- Responses to open-ended questions are not displayed on the dashboard at this time. Student comments continue to be available in the individual course reports that Blue automatically distributes by email to instructors and evaluation administrators.
- To protect student anonymity, data for class sections with fewer than five enrollments will not display on the Instructor Pages. If slicers are selected for class sections with fewer than five students enrolled, the dashboard will be blank.
- Combining course sections
- If a course section does not meet the enrollment threshold for reporting and the course was taught with a larger enrollment section (or multiple sections), you can request that your college or school evaluation administrator combine the data for courses. Combined reports are only intended for courses that are taught together in the same modality.
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