Course Evaluations

Course evaluations are an important mechanism for students to communicate feedback to instructors and leadership on their experience, giving instructors and the institution opportunities for reflection and for improving student learning. The intent of this policy is to ensure effective and appropriate gathering, aggregating, and use of student evaluation data, balancing the usefulness of evaluations with their limitations and biases as sources of information. 

1. Soliciting evaluations. To improve the quality of responses and to ensure adequate response rates, instructors and instructional units must to take the following steps: 
   1. Create a safe feedback-gathering environment. Emphasize that evaluations are anonymous and remind students that instructors cannot access feedback until after grades are posted. An atmosphere of mutual respect in the classroom also helps drive higher response rates.
   2. Emphasize the importance of evaluations. Explain why student feedback matters and how it will be used to drive improvements. 
   3. Provide dedicated time for evaluations. In synchronous courses, allocate class time for completion. In asynchronous courses (where response rates tend to be 20-30% lower than in other modalities), integrate the evaluation specifically into the week’s workload expectations. 
   4. Send targeted reminders. If instructors are unable to dedicate class time, the course evaluation system has multiple mechanisms for providing student reminders. Letting students know that peers have completed the evaluation can be an effective motivator. 
   5. Educate students on providing constructive feedback. For example, briefly discuss what kinds of comments are most helpful (specific, focused on course elements) versus unhelpful (vague or ad hominem remarks). 
   6. Exclude incentives (e.g., extra credit points). This ensures that responses are elicited in similar ways across the institution. 
2. Accessing and Using Evaluation Data 
   1. Each unit must ensure that evaluations are only available for instructor review after grades are submitted. In general, evaluations will be available to departments and instructors approximately one week after grade submission. 
   2. Administrators (department chairs, associate deans, deans, provost) may access aggregated and individual reports of instructors under their purview. 
   3. Student evaluations may be used in instructor performance evaluations, but only as part of a multi-faceted, comprehensive assessment that engages with multiple measures of effectiveness. 
   4. Access to student course evaluations shall be limited to the extent required by law, including the applicable privacy laws such as the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. 

Footnote

1. Support for the efficacy of these procedures can be found in Dommeyer, C. J., et al. (2004); Bennett, J., & Nair, C. (2010); Berk, R. (2012); Elfenbein, H. (2015); Sundstrom, E. D., Hardin, E. E., & Shaffer, M. J. (2016); Chapman, A., & Joines, S. (2017); Medina, et al. (2019); Signorini, et al. (2020); and Kreitzer, R., & Sweet-Cushman, J. (2022). ↩︎

• Appendix - Core Evaluation Questions

January 1, 1998

Original

January 1, 2016

Reviewed

October 1, 2022

Reviewed

November 5, 2025

Revised

March 12, 2026

Revised