Summary
This article provides students with an overview of the student evaluation of teaching process, including how to access Blue, the online evaluation system, the anonymity of student responses, and tips for ensuring feedback is successfully shared with the university.
Body
Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are conducted near the end of every semester, giving students the opportunity to provide instructors and academic leadership with feedback that can have an impact on class content and instruction. This article will give an overview of the process of student evaluation of teaching at Ohio University, share methods students may use to access evaluation surveys, provide details about how Ohio University protects the anonymity of student responses, and include tips for ensuring your feedback is successfully submitted.
Table of contents
Overview of student evaluations of teaching
Scope
All for-credit courses with at least one student enrollment will be evaluated, 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 a different process. This means that you may see more than one evaluation survey per class (e.g. one survey for the lecture section and a second survey for the lab section).
Evaluation period
- 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.
Notifications
- Students and instructors 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, but students may also access evaluations using any of the methods described in the Access Blue section of this article.
- Instructors may also share the evaluation link or QR code in class, as well as monitor response rates (though not view the contents of responses) in Blue throughout the evaluation period.
- Blue automatically sends two reminder emails to students who have not yet responded to the survey, and instructors may generate additional reminder messages.
- The mandatory reminder messages are sent two days after the evaluation begins and again three days before it ends.
- You will stop receiving reminder emails once you've submitted the evaluation.
- If you are still receiving reminders, then you have not submitted a response for that class.
- Upon submission, you will receive a 'your feedback for [class] has been submitted' message on screen only.
Results
Instructors and academic leadership (including deans, chairs and directors) do not receive the evaluation results until after final grades for the term have been submitted to the Office of the Registrar.
Access Blue
Aside from the direct link to an evaluation provided in the evaluation launch email, students may also access evaluations using any of these methods:
- Select the Student Evaluations of Teaching link in the Canvas course menu.
- If you don't see this link in your Canvas course, your instructor may have hidden it; choose one of the other methods to access the evaluation.
- Select the Account icon at the top of the green menu along the left of Canvas, then select the Student Evaluations of Teaching link on the slide-out panel.
- Sign into Blue directly at https://my-ohio.bluera.com (select the SAML button to authenticate).
Anonymity of responses
Student evaluations of teaching surveys are anonymous and instructors do not receive their results reports until after final grades are submitted for the semester, so be honest and thoughtful in your responses.
In order to preserve student anonymity, student names are not included in reports. To further protect your anonymity, do not include your name or any other personally identifiable information in your evaluation comments.
Instructors do not receive individual course results reports for classes with fewer than five students enrolled, but student feedback for these smaller courses is still reviewed after being aggregated into departmental and college reports. College SET administrators may also combine data from smaller course sections to produce a report that meets the enrollment threshold. Only academic leaders and SET administrators are able to provide these aggregated and/or combined reports to instructors.
Tips for successfully providing feedback
- If you can't finish your response in one session, your progress will be saved and you can return to finish and submit any time before the deadline using any of the access methods described in this article.
- Responses cannot be modified or cancelled after submission, so make sure to read the questions and possible responses carefully.
- Courses with multiple instructors will only have one evaluation survey, but the instructor-focused questions will be repeated for each instructor.
- Ensure you are responding with regard to the intended instructor.
- Deadlines for participation are firm. Surveys will not be re-opened or reset for any reason.
- While the majority of classes follow the established Academic Calendar, with end dates that coincide with the close of the term, some programs have specialized calendars. Please note the established evaluation schedules described in the Overview of student evaluations of teaching section of this article, which are based on the length of the class.
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