You fill out a questionnaire on each course you take, every semester. They’re incredibly important for the campus community, in particular the written comments that students provide. So be sure to complete them for all of your courses! But what is the point of course evaluations, and what is your role with them? Here’s a quick primer.

YOUR VOICE MATTERS — A LOT!

COURSE PLANNING. One of the purposes of student feedback on courses is to provide professors with insight on the student experience in their courses. Faculty members rely on student input so that they can continously improve the learning experience in their course — but without your input, this can’t happen.

STUDENT PERSPECTIVES. You might not be an expert on teaching, but only you have expertise regarding your own individual learning. Sharing your insights is essential for professors to know what your unique experience in the course was. While the questionnaire asks your input in terms of a scale, one student’s “strong agree” as to whether an instructor assigned work that promoted their learning might reflect the same intensity as someone else’s “agree.” So, in addition to registering your impressions via the questions asking if you agree or disagree, written feedback that clarifies your opinion is crucial — that’s why every question leaves space for you to elaborate in writing.

WHO SEES COURSE FEEDBACK?

PROFESSORS. The professor whose class you took has access to the feedback that students provide on the course, though they are only given access to it after grades have been filed for that course. They have no way to see the identity of what student made any comment or ranking response (like “strongly agree,” “agree,”“disagree,” or “strongly disagree”).

ADMINISTRATORS. These surveys are used as part of assessments about faculty retention, promotion, & tenure. That means that administrators and the tenure & promotion committee also see survey responses. They take these surveys seriously, so you should, too. 

WHAT’S STUDENTS’ ROLE?

THINK IN TERMS OF GOALS. Input you provide should focus on how the course contributed to your learning. That means that you might have found the class hard or easy, but it might’ve still helped you advance your knowledge or skills. So, think about what the goals of the course were (often expressed on a syllabus as “learning outcomes”), and judge as fairly as you can to what extent the course helped you achieve those goals.

BE CONSTRUCTIVE & CONCRETE. Your written comments are incredibly important. Anchoring your feedback in specifics of the course helps faculty to know in a more granular way what works well and what might beneficially be altered. Practical feedback helps you avoid personal comments about the professor, too. Current research indicates that students can reveal bias (based on such things as gender identity or race) through these kinds of surveys, which often happens when comments express students’ general feelings about a course or about the professor’s personality.

THIS CAN HELP YOU, TOO! Reflecting on the course gives you the opportunity to think about your own learning. How far have you come since the course began? How do the subject matter and skills you learned in this course relate to the rest of your coursework? Thinking about your progress can help you make better decisions about how to proceed in future courses, and taking stock of your learning experiences can help you choose a major, minor, or even a career path.

FORWARD THINKING. Your advice will be most useful if you think about what should be preserved and also what might be productively changed in future runs of the course. So, if the course takes place at 8:00 AM, which is something that your professor can’t control, expressing dissatisfaciton with the class time won’t help future versions of the course (which might be scheduled at a different time of day).

FURTHER RESOURCES 

Heffernan, Troy. “Sexism, Racism, Prejudice, and Bias: A Literature Review & Synthesis Surrounding Student Evaluations of Courses and Teaching.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Ed, 2021.

Stanford University Academic Advising. “Why Should I Fill Out My Course Evaluations?”