Faculty Senate and the Provost's working group for Student and Peer Evaluations of Teaching recommended changes to student evaluations of teaching that take effect for the fall 2025 semester. For more information about all changes, review the Student Guidelines Report from the working group.
Table of Contents
Overview of student evaluation of teaching
All for-credit courses with at least one student enrollment will be evaluated in Blue, except those tutorials for which the catalog number is appended by a T (e.g. 3450T) and Heritage College of Medicine classes, which are evaluated by another process. In order to protect student anonymity, instructors do not receive individual course reports for classes with fewer than five students.
Before the evaluation period
Thirty days before the evaluation period begins, Blue sends college SET administrators an email with a list of form preview tasks for each course with an upcoming evaluation. Depending on the schedule of the classes for which they are responsible, SET administrators may receive these emails throughout the semester. Form preview tasks expire when the survey launches, so they must be completed by SET administrators before the evaluation period begins. The form preview task is important because it is the only opportunity to to confirm that students will receive the correct questionnaire for each course and to do a final proofread for issues. If you are new to previewing forms, we recommend reviewing the Form preview tasks section of this article.
During the evaluation period
Timing
- For courses that run seven weeks or longer:
- Evaluation survey is launched at 8 AM fourteen days before the course end date and is open for one week.
- Data collection closes at 11:59 PM on the seventh day before the published last day of the course.
- Survey is closed before the typical finals week begins.
- For courses that run six weeks or shorter:
- Evaluation survey is launched at 8 AM five days before the last day of class and is open through the last day of class.
- Data collection closes at 11:59 PM on the published course end date.
- Responses will not be accepted after the deadline and data collection cannot be reopened or extended. If you are unsure of a course end date, you can find it in the Course Offerings Search.
Notifications
- Instructors and students are notified of the evaluation launch by an email sent from servicedesk@ohio.edu. The student version of the email contains a link to the survey. The instructor version includes a link to monitor and manage survey participation in Blue.
- Instructors and students may also access evaluations through Canvas and by signing into Blue directly.
- Blue automatically sends two reminder emails to instructors and to students who have not yet responded to the survey.
- Reminder messages are sent two days after the evaluation begins and three days before it ends.
- Students will stop receiving reminder emails after they've submitted the evaluation.
- Upon submission, students receive a 'your feedback for [class] has been submitted' message on screen only.
Following the evaluation period
After final grades are due for the term, college SET administrators are provided with Blue-generated reports via emails containing links to individual course reports, as well as department reports. Individual course reports are only generated for classes that meet both the enrollment threshold (five or more students), and the response threshold (at least one response). However, the response data for courses that do not meet the thresholds is included in the aggregated department reports.
The report messages will also include links to the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in Power BI, which is refreshed with the latest SET results data the week after Blue reports are distributed.
Accessing Blue
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You can access Blue at the following link to see all active tasks assigned.
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Changes to Blue or SET Dashboard access, such as adding, removing, or modifying user permissions, should be submitted to the Tech Help Center or servicedesk@ohio.edu by a representative of the office of the dean and include the user’s name, Ohio email address, and the specific access change required.
Form preview tasks
College SET administrators receive two form preview tasks for each evaluation because there are two parts to each evaluation survey, the course questions (which only appear once per survey) and the instructor questions (which appear multiple times if there is more than one instructor). However, the two task links in the email notification and in the My Tasks widget in Blue both lead to the same preview, so administrators only need to engage with one task for each course:
- Sign into Blue and view the My Tasks widget (or open the email notification).
- Select Start Now to the right of the first task to open the form preview (or select the task link in the email).
- On the Form Preview page, select Preview to open a true preview of what a student would see, or just review a list of the questions by selecting Expand All.
- If there is an issue, submit a ticket with the course info, such as the course prefix, catalog number and section, and describe the problem with as much detail as possible (screen captures are helpful).
- When satisfied with the survey, select the Submit button on the form preview screen to complete the task.
Accessing reports
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Reports are sent out by email after grades are due for the full term.
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College SET administrators will receive a copy of the college and department reports for which they are responsible, as well as a copy of each individual course report for the college/department.
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Course reports are only generated for courses with at least five students enrolled and for which at least one evaluation response was submitted, but the response data for courses that do not meet the threshold will be included in the aggregated department and college reports.
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College SET administrators and instructors may find past results at any time by signing into Blue directly or via the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in Power BI.
Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard
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 and evaluation administrators will continue to receive the automated reports emails from Blue for individual course results and department/college 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 (servicedesk@ohio.edu) after the evaluation period ends and term grades are submitted. This link will 'install' the Student Evaluations of Teaching 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 Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard app in your PowerBI Apps list.
- Changes to dashboard access, such as adding, removing, or modifying user permissions, should be submitted to the Tech Help Center or servicedesk@ohio.edu by a representative of the office of the dean and include the user’s name, Ohio email address, and the specific access change required.
Operating the dashboard
Considerations
- Responses to open-ended questions are not currently displayed on the dashboard, but will be added by the time the dashboard is refreshed with data from the fall 2025 evaluation period, the week after final grades are submitted. Student comments continue to be available in the individual course reports that Blue automatically distributes by email to instructors and college SET administrators.
- To protect student anonymity, data for class sections with fewer than five enrollments will not display in the dashboard. If slicer options are selected for individual or combined sections with fewer than five total students enrolled, the dashboard will be blank.
- Administrators have the ability to select multiple course sections to provide combined data in more granular detail than found in Blue's distributed department reports by using the Admin Pages section of the dashboard. More details about combining courses are found in the Navigating the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard (Power BI) help article.
Assisting instructors and students
Get help from OIT
Additional resources