The Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness administers the course evaluations to the campus community during the final weeks of the fall and spring semesters. We have created a guide to using Watermark/Evaluation Kit in order for the administrators and instructors to get the most out of the results. If you would like to see a quick guide on how to review your results, please visit the EK/Watermark quick guide.
How Do Students Get Access?
- Students receive several emails from Provost-MSU inviting them to complete the surveys during the semester. When they receive the link, they can access the surveys and see which surveys they haven’t completed yet..
- Students can access the surveys directly through Canvas by accessing their Account / EvaluationKIT User link.
- Timeline: Surveys are made available approximately two weeks before classes end, and they stay open for student participation for several days after the end of classes.
Best Practices for Supporting Student Survey Engagement
While course surveys are required of the department, the students are not required to complete them. However, high participation rates increase the value of the survey. A few key points for faculty:
- Students cannot be required to complete surveys: do not offer extra-credit, or participation points, or use the survey as an assignment.
- Students should not share with anyone or be asked to provide proof that they participated in the survey.
What Faculty Can Do to Support Participation:
- Provide time in-class to complete surveys. During the survey completion period, tell students you want to give them time to complete the surveys, which are valuable to you. If you want students to complete the surveys, take time in the beginning or middle of class, and leave the room for ten minutes while students work on the surveys.
- Tell students why student surveys are important – to you and your colleagues. Tell students that you read them and learn from them, helping you improve the course for future students.
- Remind students of the email to look for: The subject line is, “Student course survey” and the sender is provst-msu.
What Happens to the Surveys
- Results are made available to instructors via Canvas approximately one week after the surveys close.
- Surveys are accessible by instructors and their supervisors.
- Results are not publicly available.
Faculty Survey Access
Access your Course Surveys results through the Canvas interface.
- Log into Canvas, click “Account” on the left of your home page, and click “EvaluationKit User.” On the upper right of the page, click on the arrow next to “Student/Respondent” and click on “Instructor.” Go to “Results” then “Project Results” to find links to each of your courses. From these links you will see all of your courses that were surveyed using our online Student Course Surveys process. [NOTE: Tenured faculty who “opted-out” of student surveys will not see results]
- When you see the list of courses that were evaluated, click the “View” link after each course and select the report type of your choosing. Once a selection is made you can save the report as a pdf file. If you would like to download all your reports, click “generate batch report,” and you will receive an email from EvaluationKIT when the report is ready to download. In the email, click the link “Download Batch Report File” to download the report and save it to your computer.
- Access a quick guide to viewing your results.
- If you still have difficulty accessing your Student Course Surveys, please contact Alexa Chucala.
Opt-Out Options
- Tenured faculty are given the opportunity to opt-out of surveys for the full academic year–if you opt out in the fall you are also opting out for the spring. Look out for emails from Provost-MSU in the fall if you are a tenured professor looking to opt-out of student surveys.
Below is the calendar for the 2022-23 academic year.
Currently, we only handle course evaluations for the Fall and Spring full-term semesters. If you are teaching in a non-standard academic semester, please consult your Dean or School’s office on applicable dates.
Spring 2023
April 24, 2023 – Surveys begin for in-person courses
May 16, 2023 – Surveys close for in-person courses
May 29, 2023 – Results from surveys are emailed to administrators and instructors