Faculty Course Evals

Online Course Evaluations is a web-based system for evaluating the vast majority of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs’ courses at UCSF. Students are asked about characteristics of the course and instructor to provide information for improvement.

Log in to YOUR Course Evaluations

NOTE: Access is automatically granted only to instructors who have previously been evaluated or are currently being evaluated. If you are a department chair, you may request access by contacting Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs via the email below.

Login issues related to MyAccess? Contact IT: (415) 514-4100

Evaluation-related questions? Contact the Registrar's Office at [email protected].

Faculty To-Do List

There are four things that faculty will do.

  1. PRE-EVAL— Ten days before an evaluation, you will receive an email that you can enter the system to create individual questions for your classes. This is entirely optional. Your course will still be evaluated based upon questions provided by your department.
  2. DURING-EVAL — During the evaluation, faculty should talk to their students to encourage them to complete the evaluation. You may also set up incentives for completing your evaluation, if you wish. You can log in to check your class response rates at any time during the open evaluation period; however, you will not be able to see who completed an evaluation. Evaluations are 100% anonymous. Not even administrators can see who completed an evaluation.
  3. DURING-EVAL — During the evaluation, we recommend that faculty check their response rate periodically to make sure there is a steady increase in responses. If not, then it helps for the faculty to talk to the students in class to encourage completion. Faculty may also log into the system to send reminders to those who have not yet completed an evaluation.
  4. POST-EVAL — Evaluation reports are released after the course's term has ended and once all grades have been submitted. Please be sure to follow grade submission deadlines.

FAQs

How does the course evaluation process work?
  1. Your students (and yourself) receive an automated email from Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs to start the evaluation process. It includes a web page link to access evaluations for their current courses.
    1. Students who delay will receive an email reminder every day until they complete their evaluations or until the evaluation period ends.
  2. You can log on the evaluation system any time to check response rates for your classes.
  3. You will be emailed a link to view your summarized results after all grades for your department have been posted.
  4. Your results remain indefinitely accessible within the What-Do-You-Think platform. You may also export evaluation results in PDF or Excel format, if you wish. Trend reports will automatically be created as more evaluations are added for an instructor.
Understanding the Evaluation Period

The evaluation period for your course is determined by your program's program administrator. Please feel free to direct questions regarding the evaluation period to your respective program administrator.

Can evaluations be reopened? No. Unfortunately, we are not able to reopen an evaluation once it is closed. If a student asks, please remind them to submit their evaluations when prompted to in the future. However, if they wish to still submit an evaluation, ask them to state their thoughts in an email sent to the department chairperson.

How to Add Your Own Instructor Questions

Instructors are allowed to add up to four quantitative questions for their courses. Instructors are notified ten calendar days before the evaluation is set to begin, during which time they can enter their own questions. Once the evaluation period opens, questions can no longer be added or edited.

  1. Click “My Questions” to go to the My Questions page.
  2. Choose the future term and course for which you want to create questions. By default, the system displays course information for the current term.
  3. Click "Show Questions".
    1. The evaluation questions for the course are displayed, below which is an “Instructor’s Questions” section.
  4. Click Add New Question.
  5. Enter the question text.
  6. If you want this question added added to the evaluations of all your course for the selected evaluation term, not just this course, select the corresponding checkbox.
  7. Enter an abbreviation for the question.
    1. Note: The abbreviation is displayed in some reports.
  8. Select a question type. Currently, instructors are allowed to select only quantitative questions.
  9. Do one of the following based on the question type you selected:
    1. Quantitative
      1. Select the quantitative answer type you want for the question and write out your question.
  10. Click "Create"
  11. Repeat steps 4-10 to add more questions (up to four questions).
How to Send Reminder Emails to Students

Instructors may send reminder emails to students in addition to the regularly scheduled ones. The e-mails only go to students who have NOT yet completed your evaluation. Below is a screenshot of the Instructor Home screen. Each of your courses are listed here; the Reminder Email button is to the right of the course.

screenshot of the Instructor Home screen showing the reminder email process

You can save the message for future use or send it immediately. The following disclaimer will automatically be added to the footer of your email. “All course evaluations are anonymous. This email was sent to all students who have not completed an evaluation for this course. Neither the instructor or any administrators have access to see who receives this email.”

Why is my course not being evaluated?

A list of courses to be evaluated is sent each term by the program administrator of each program. If your course was not included, please contact your program administrator.

When are evaluation reports released?

Evaluation reports are typically released shortly after the term in which the course is taught has ended AND after grades are posted for each course (grading deadlines). This is not an automated process; therefore, instructors will see a placeholder report release date, which is typically six months after the course's term end date. The Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs Dean’s Office makes every best effort to release evaluation reports as close as possible after the end of the term in which courses were evaluated. Your patience is appreciated.

How can I flag comments

Comment flagging can be done only for reports where a student leaves comments, such as the Comments Report and Instructor Report. With the proper permissions, Instructors, perform the following tasks to flag a comment.

  1. Choose “Report Browser” from the Reports menu.
  2. Select the Term, and if needed, the School, Department, Instructor, and Course you’re interested in by choosing the appropriate entries from the drop-down lists. These lists have been customized for your school.
  3. Locate a course whose evaluation information you want to view. Use the navigation controls above the list as needed to locate the course in the list.
  4. Click the course’s “View” link to go to the Ratings Summary page for the course.

  5. From the report type drop down box, select either “Comments Report” or “Instructor Report.” The following example is the Comments Report.

     

    Flagging comments


     

  6. Read the comments. If a comment needs to be reviewed, select the ”Flag for review” check box to the right of the comment.
  7. You will see a message at the top of the screen letting you know the comment has been flagged. Click the “X” to the right of this message to dismiss it.