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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 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.
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. If you are unsure of a course end date, you can find it in the Faculty & Advising Center and 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 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, you may have hidden it (see Canvas evaluation link section below).
- Note that this link does not support cross-listed Canvas sections. If your course is composed of cross-listed sections, consider directing students to one of the other access methods described below.
- 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).
- 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 again 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.
Results
After final grades are due for the term, instructors receive an email from Blue containing a link to the evaluation results report in Blue, as well as another link to the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in PowerBI.
- Evaluation results reports are only generated for courses with at least five students enrolled and for which at least one evaluation response was submitted.
- The response data for courses that do not meet the thresholds is included in the aggregated department reports that are received by college SET administrators.
Results are added to the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in Power BI the week following Blue's report distributions.
Instructors may also find past results reports at any time by signing into Blue directly (select the SAML button, then select the View all reports link in the My Reports widget) or via the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in PowerBI.
Access Blue
You can check your 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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Canvas evaluation link
Confirm evaluation link
The Student Evaluations of Teaching 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 Student Evaluations of Teaching link is present
Hide evaluation link
Nearly all courses are evaluated, but if your course is one of the few that 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 Student Evaluations of Teaching item and drag it down to the bottom section labeled “Drag items here to hide them from students”
- Select Save
- The Student Evaluations of Teaching link will no longer be visible in your course navigation menu
Provide evaluation link to students
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- Option 1: 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
- Option 2: 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
- Option 3: Send a reminder email
- Select the ellipsis (…) on the course you are interested in
- Select View Invitees
- 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 once grades have been submitted for full term courses.
- This includes courses that run for less than 15 weeks (e.g. first summer session courses will not receive reports until after second and full summer session grades are submitted).
- An email will be sent from Blue with a link to access your individual reports for courses that have at least five students enrolled and for which the evaluation has received at least one response. The email will also include a link to the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard in PowerBI.
- In order to preserve student anonymity, course results reports will not be generated for sections with fewer than five students enrolled, however, responses from these courses will be aggregated into department and college reports provided to academic leadership.
- In some cases, response data for sections with small enrollments may be combined with data for larger sections in the Student Evaluations of Teaching 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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Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has developed a Power BI dashboard to provide instructors and academic leadership with access to more robust reporting of evaluation data. Instructors and college SET administrators will continue to receive the automated reports emails from Blue for individual course results and department reports.
Accessing the dashboard
- The first time you access the dashboard, you will need to use a direct link to 'add' the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard app in your Power BI reports (does not install anything on your device). This link will take you directly to the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard. The link is also provided in the automated report notification emails that instructors receive from Blue (servicedesk@ohio.edu) after the evaluation period ends and term grades are submitted.
- For subsequent visits to the dashboard, you may continue to use the direct link, create a bookmark, or you can open the dashboard from the Power BI site. This link will take you to your Power BI homepage.
- Once you've signed into Power BI with your Ohio account, select Apps from the menu along the left, and then select the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard app in your Power BI Apps list.
- 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 an associate dean and include the user’s name, Ohio email address, and the specific access change required.
Operating the dashboard
For details about using the dashboard, review the Navigating the Student Evaluations of Teaching Dashboard (Power BI) help article.
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 college SET administrators.
- To protect student anonymity, data for individual or multiple class sections with fewer than five enrollments will not display in the dashboard. If slicers 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.
Get help from OIT
Additional resources