Course evaluation is the form you fill out at the end of a course to give your feedback about your instructor and different aspects of the course. The questions vary from school to school but generally collect the same kind of information. The students complete these forms anonymously i.e., the instructor does not know which student in their class filled out the forms.

Course evaluation may seem like a formality, but it is an important tool to maintain and improve the quality of education provided.

Course evaluations help faculty plan and improve the courses they will teach in the future. Faculty can modify/improve the syllabus, their teaching style, assignments, quizzes, office hours and more based on the feedback they receive from students. Faculty also have to report some of this data as part of their annual report.

Evaluation reports are used by administrators such as department chairs and deans when deciding on the promotion and tenure of your instructor. For the administrators, course evaluation is an important source of information about your instructor's teaching.

Course evaluation data is sometimes used for accreditation purposes

Conducting course evaluations online simplifies the process and offers advantages to students, faculty and administrators.

Available for two weeks
With online evaluations, there is no need to rush to complete the form in class. Now you can complete the form at leisure and give more thoughtful feedback. Missed the class in which your instructor distributed the course evaluation form? Not a problem anymore. These evaluations are available 24x7, for a two week period.

Anonymous
Online course evaluation is completely anonymous. Your instructor can’t see whos filled out the form or what information was provided by that student. They only see the aggregate results for each question. You can see a sample report that an instructor gets.

It's Eco-Friendly
Moving to online evaluations will save tons of paper every year. This is one small effort in VCU’s larger commitment to eco-friendly practices.

Evaluations are available for most of the courses, but there are certain 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. The best way to verify this is to check on the list of courses which courses have online evaluation available this semester.

The questions vary from school to school and sometimes from course to course. 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

Reports from course evalautions are shared with the instructor who taught the course, the department chair and the dean of the school.

For Fall and Spring courses, the evaluations are available last two weeks of classes. For Summer courses, the evaluations are available for last seven days of class. Please see the List of Courses page to see the start and end dates for your courses.

We send you an email when the evaluations are available. We also send you reminder emails if you have not completed the evaluations.

It usually takes 5-10 minutes to complete each form. You can of-course take more time and provide more detailed feedback.

Yes, you should be able to complete the evaluations just like the registered students.

Faculty see the results two weeks after the evaluations are over. This is done to ensure that are the student grades have been submitted before reports are made available.

Sorry, the evaluations are available only for a period of two weeks. Once that period is over, you cannot complete the evaluations

No, you can do only one evaluation at a time and do the remaining later, though we recommend not leaving them for later.

No, you cannot save a partially completed evaluation.

Yes, they are. The software we use for course evaluation has two layers of confidentiality built in.

1. As soon as you submit the evaluation, it stores your identity in one table and your responses in another and encrypts the link between the two.

2. When an instructor sees the reports, they only see aggregate results. The instructor will never see the identity of the student who submitted the evaluation. Please see the sample report:

Yes, your instructor can see your comments, but cannot see the name of student who submitted them. When you write text comments, please do not include your name or information that might allow instructor to uniquely identify you.

This is how the comments appear on the evaluation report:

No. Only the software knows that you filled out the evaluation, but it automatically encrypts this information and hides it from the faculty. Your instructor will never know whether you filled out an evaluation or what your specific responses were.

In fact, the online system is better at keeping your responses anonymous than the paper based system since your instructor cannot see your handwriting.

No. We keep a delay of two weeks between when the evaluation period ends and when your instructor sees the reports. All the grades should be posted in eServices by then.

Just like we keep the evaluations fair for students, by keeping them confidential, we also need to keep them fair for the instructors. When you log in to complete evaluations for a course, our system ensures that you are enrolled in this course and that you submit the evaluation for each course only once.

If you do not see an evaluation link for a course, it could be one of the following reason:

• The evaluations for this course may not have started yet or might be over. Please check the list of courses to see when the evaluations will start and end.
• The course might be excluded from online evaluations because of our exculsion criteria (see exclusion criteria above)
• You might have filled it out already
• You withdrew from the course

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.