Evaluations are open for students in last 14 days of each course (fall and spring) or last 7 days or each course (summer)

Couple of things:

• When the evaluation is going on, you should use class time to emphasize the importance of this process
• Check the response rate and remind students if the response rate is low. The instructions to check the response rate are mentioned below.

Majority of courses taught at VCU are evaluated using the online system. There are some exceptions - for example, courses with less than five students do not have an evaluation. Courses which are classified as Independent Study, Research, Master's Thesis, Dissertation, Private Lessons, Recitals etc do not have evaluations either.

Following questionnaires are used by different schools and departments:

• Academic Affairs
  • Community Engagement
  • English Language Program
  • Honors Program
• College of Humanities and Sciences (Including School of Mass Communications, School of World Studies)
  • Department of English
• School of Allied Health Professions
  • Rehabilitation Counseling
• School of the Arts (Common Form)
  • Department of Art Foundation
  • Department of Cinema
  • Department of Communication Arts
  • Department of Craft/Material Studies
  • Department of Dance
  • Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising
  • Department of Graphic Design
  • Department of Music
  • Department of Painting + Printmaking
• School of Business
• School of Education
  • Department of Educational Leadership
• College of Engineering
• School of Medicine
  • Department of Biostatistics
  • Department of Radiation Oncology
• School of Nursing
• School of Social Work
• University College (Except UNIV 111 and UNIV 112)
  • UNIV 111 and UNIV 112 courses
• VCU Life Sciences
• Wilder School

Our office does not choose the questions used for course evaluations. We use the questionnaire provided to us by your school or department.

Sorry, at this time you cannot add your own questions to the form.

For Fall and Spring courses, the evaluations are available last two weeks of classes. For Summer courses, the evaluations are available for last 7 days of class. If you are teaching a short course, the start and end date of evaluation will be adjusted accordingly.

We send students an email when the evaluations start. After that, students who have not completed the evaluations get regular reminders.

We send instructors an email few days before the evaluations start to let you know in advance.

Students receive an automated email with a direct link to their evaluation system. They can use this link to access the evaluation forms.

Evaluations are open before the final exam week. In most cases students would have completed the evaluations before they take their final exam or get their final grade.

If you are concerned about the grades affecting your course evaluations, please post the grades after evaluations for the course are closed.

Visit the Blue website to see number of students who have completed the evaluations.

• The most important thing you can do is have a discussion with your students regarding the value of the survey and how it is used to evaluate all faculty. Students do not believe there is any importance attached to their opinion. We need them to understand this is a responsibility that has serious consequences.
• If students in your class bring laptops to class, you can give them some time at the end of class to complete the evaluations on their computers.
• You can provide students with incentives for completing the course evaluations. Since the evaluations are considered confidential, we do not reveal the names of students who have completed the evaluations. Instead you can give incentives based on the overall response rate of the class. Be creative, some faculty use extra points based on achieving a certain level, others come up with amusing awards. Some faculty have more than one class compete and the winner gets a pizza. That may be extreme but it does work. Again, use an incentive that you are comfortable with.

Course evaluations are anonymous. The course evaluation software has been designed to conceal the identity of the students from their instructor. Students may not be comfortable revealing that they have completed the evaluations. Instead, you can use some of the tips mentioned above to improve the response rate.

Reports are made available for each course 2 weeks after the evaluation for that course ends. You will also receive an automated email once reports become available.

See step-by-step instructions to access the reports

Each report has a PDF link. This link can be used to save PDF verion of the report

The report includes aggregate results for each question in the form. You can view them by numbers or as percentages. The reports will also include any comments for open ended questions that students have responded to.

• Reports DO NOT include any personally identifiable information, including – who filled out the course evaluation form and what did they fill in.
• For team-taught courses, the reports do not include the results for your co-instructor in those courses.

Normally the department chair of dean of a school have access to the reports within their department or school. They can also request other for users to be granted access to these reports.

No, you cannot get access to evaluation data for other instructors. For some departments the evaluation reports also include department level averages.

If you need help with the online course evaluations, the quickest way to contact us is via email to courseeval@vcu.edu. Please include your name, phone number, eID, and the course and section number for the evaluation you are having trouble with.

The start and end date for short courses are adjusted based on Course End Date listed in eServices.

For team taught courses, students see course questions which are asked once and instructor questions which are asked separately for each instructor. The instructors can see only the responses to course questions their own instructor questions.

If a course is cross-listed, each section of the course is treated as separate course. The students see the evaluations just like they normally would, but the instructors will be a merged report.