College Student Course Feedback (SCF)

Students will receive email invitations from the Blue system, as well as periodic email reminders until all surveys are completed. Any student who does not receive an email, should login to the system directly to check for survey tasks, as they should still have access even if the email did not reach them. All emails from the Blue system will come from blueeval@blueeval.unc.edu, but the listed sender will vary by school. The College’s listed sender will be College Student Course Feedback.

Links to the Blue system will be available within ConnectCarolina (look for “Blue Course Evaluation System” in the list of links on your respective home page).

Links to task views of the Blue system are accessible via Canvas if a student or instructor is logged in with their onyen. Links will be available via the Account menu. Tasks can be viewed within a course via the Blue CourseEval link in the course menu (typically on the left side of the screen).

All users can log in directly at https://blueeval.unc.edu/unc/ with their onyen credentials.

The primary purpose of end of course Student Course Feedback surveys is to help instructors improve their courses and their teaching. Feedback reports are also used as part of instructor evaluations. Some questions on the survey are designed and used specifically for assessing the IDEAs in Action general education curriculum. Instructors and administrators take these evaluations seriously, so we encourage all students to take the time to complete their feedback in a thoughtful and honest manner.

The Blue System has built in security features that protect student identifying information. On reports released to instructors and department administrators, responses will not be connected to student identity and neither will free-response comments be connected to other responses, however, free-response answers will be shared in full on end of course student feedback reports. Please be aware that responses to the surveys are governed by the University Honor Code.

Survey responses are treated as confidential by the staff who manage the system and those with data stewardship of this process, but data is not collected anonymously. Responses can be traced back to an individual student if needed to address comments of concern.

Student course feedback reports are delivered to instructors approximately 1 week after the last final exam day for the term. Instructors receive a report containing the breakdown of quantitative response data as well as free-response answers. These reports are also shared with department administrators including Department Chairs, Department Lab Managers, and other Chair designated department administrators or staff for the purpose of evaluating instructor’s teaching and in this capacity are considered protected HR documents. Reports for courses with fewer than four enrolled students are released to the Department Chair for review to ensure there are not any anonymity concerns. The Chair then has discretion to release the reports to the instructor and other administrators.

Each semester instructors will receive 1-3 emails with a direct link to access their courses’ response rates.

Instructors can also log into Blue at any time via any of the access options listed above.  This will take them to the Blue Dashboard which will show their Task List and have an option for checking response rates.  Response rate tasks will be labeled as “subject view management” or “view and manage questionnaire settings” in the task list.  The Dashboard option on the left menu will also display response rates across all course sections along with some additional response metrics, such as time, day, and access point trends.

The questions asked on Students Course Feedback surveys varies by department and curriculum.  To check what questions are being asked on your evaluation, please reference the guide below. Instructors can also see a preview of the full question set applicable to each specific course through the Question Personalization task in the Blue System (see FAQ directly below).

Please be aware that cross-listed courses will use the instrument assigned to the owning (sponsoring) section of the cross-list, which is determined based on the offering number in ConnectCarolina.  If you have any questions about what instrument will be assigned to your course, you can contact the College Student Coruse Feedback Team at cas_evaluations@unc.edu.

Guide

All College courses being evaluated will receive the standard College Instrument.

The following Departments and Programs will also receive the below additional questions.

The following Departments and Programs will also receive the below additional questions.

• Art History Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Studio Arts Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Art TA Led Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies-Content Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies-Language Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies-Recitation Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Biology TA Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Chemistry Lab Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• ECON 101 Recitations Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• English and Comparative Literature-General Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• English and Comparative Literature-Writing Additional Questions (Fall 2022)
• History-Graduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• History-Lecture Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• History-Recitation Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Mathematics Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Music-Course Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Music-Graduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Music-Performance Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Philosophy Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Philosophy Seminar Additional Questions (Fall 2024)
• Political Science-Graduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Political Science-TA Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Political Science-Undergraduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Psychology & Neuroscience-Graduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Psychology & Neuroscience-Undergraduate Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Peace, War, and Defense Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Romance Studies-A Additional Questions (Fall 2021)
• Romance Studies-X Additional Questions (Fall 2021)

Courses that carry IDEAs in Action general education requirements will also receive questions directly related to the Student Learning Outcomes for the general education requirements it carries. These questions are asked for the purpose of assessing the general education curriculum (not individual courses and instructors) and will be reported separately to instructors, departments, general education program directors, and others involved in the assessment of the general education curriculum. You can view the full question set here.

The above displays only the currently asked questions. If you would like to see the question list from a prior term, please email cas_evaluations@unc.edu.

The Blue System includes a feature which allows instructors to add personalized questions to their evaluations.  All instructors listed for evaluation will have this opportunity.  Instructors will receive an email from the system approximately seven days prior to the evaluation opening date with an access link and instructions.

Step-by-step instructions for how to add questions to your evaluations are available.  For all users, we would like to stress that your questions will not be displayed to students unless you have submitted them.  The save button will save your work but does not submit your questions.

If you have questions about how to use this feature, please contact the College Student Course Feedback Team at cas_evaluations@unc.edu.

We have posted the instruments currently being used by the College and its departments for those who wish to review the current questions before selecting their additional questions. Reference the FAQ directly above this one.  You will also see a preview of the questions from within the question personalization task, which will display all questions currently being asked on your course in addition to the options for questions you can add.

Responses to these instructor added questions will not be included on Student Course Feedback reports that are shared with department.  They will be sent to each instructor in a separate report that only that instructor will have access to. Central offices will not share these reports without instructor authorization.

Reporting Access Tips (10/2022)

Special Note about Spring 2020 Reports

Spring 2020 course reports were only released to the instructor per College policy decision. The Office of Undergraduate Curricula is only authorized to release reports from Spring 2020 with the instructor’s express approval. Instructors can share their reports however they see fit but are not required to do so.

General Report Access Information

SCF reports will only be released to authorized persons. Instructors may request copies of their own reports if they cannot access them directly in the Blue system. Authorized department faculty and staff may request reports from their department.

The Blue Course Evaluation system was used for evalutions in all College departments beginning in Spring 2017.  It was also used for four pilot departments in Fall 2016 (Art, Economics, Mathematics, and German and Slavic Languages and Literatures).  All evaluations in the Blue Course Evaluation System will remain available to instructors and department administrators for both web viewing and PDF download.  Past years’ evaluations will display under the “Archive” reporting section.  Report viewing defaults to “Current” which displays the most recent three cycles (fall, spring, summer). Users who belong to multiple user groups (e.g. Student and Instructor or Instructor and CAS_Dept_User) will need to select the user group associated with the report access (Instructor for personal course reports, CAS_Dept_User for department report access) when they login to Blue.

In the Blue system, you may see reports marked as “Threshold Not Met” which means this report is not available.  This can mean one of two things: your course had a total enrollment (invited count) of 1-3 students, and/or your course received zero responses on the survey.  In the case of the low enrollment courses, the reports are released to the department chair for review before they are released to others.  Department Chairs have the authority to release the report as needed once they have reviewed it for student anonymity concerns.  If you are the instructor of such a course, please contact your department chair about obtaining a copy of the report.

If you are an instructor and do not have access to one of your reports, please contact cas_evaluations@unc.edu with the course subject, number, section, and semester for assistance.

Course Evaluations for the College were managed through Class Climate from Fall 2014 until Fall 2016.  If you need a copy of your course evaluation report for any course taught between during this time, please email cas_evaluations@unc.edu with the course subject, number, and section, and what semester it was taught.  A PDF copy of the evaluation report will then be emailed to you.

For course evaluation reports from prior to Fall 2014, report archives are maintained by the department.  Please contact your department regarding who maintains this archive.

Digital Measures, the electronic system used prior to Class Climate, was implemented for departments starting in 2009 (implementation dates vary) and ran through Summer 2014.  The Digital Measures site was taken down in early spring 2015, and course evaluation coordinators no longer have access to the dashboard to pull reports for course evaluations prior to fall 2014.  The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) preserved the raw data and has shared this with the College.  Please email cas_evaluations@unc.edu with the instructor’s first and last name, the course subject, number, and section, and what semester it was taught to enquire if data is available.  This data can only be shared as an excel file at this time.

Prior to Digital Measures implementation course evaluations were processed through paper forms and managed by individual departments.

The primary source of resources for College users is this webpage. Below is a list of available resources. Any questions or concerns not addressed here can be sent to the College Student Course Feedback team at cas_evaluations@unc.edu.

Resources

• SET Information for Instructors (updated 2023-05-31)
• Question Personalization Step-by-Step Instructions (updated 2022-10-24)
• Course Selection Quick Guide (updated 2021-09-09)
• Course Selection Instructions (updated 2021-09-09)
• Course Selection Tips and Tricks (updated 2019-02-07)

This is an example of the semester’s schedule based on a typical fall or spring semester timeline.

• Census Date – Week 3
• Course Selections open – Between weeks 3 and 6, always after Census Date, opening on a Monday
• Course Selections close – 5 days after course selections opens, closing on a Friday
• Instructor access to add personalized questions – 1 week prior to evaluation opening (per-course if evaluation dates differ)
• Evaluations open – Approximately the last 14 scheduled class days (Last 21 scheduled class days for select lab sections and IDST 101 sections)
• Evaluation reports released – 1 week after last scheduled exam day

To support our goal of improving instruction through Student Course Feedback, we encourage departments to develop a questionnaire that is customized to their needs not met by the standard College Instrument.  A guide to current questionnaires in use, and PDF copies can be found in the above “What questions are asked on the Student Course Feedback surveys?” FAQ.

Please contact the College’s Course Evaluation Coordinator at cas_evaluations@unc.edu for further details on the customization process, required and recommended questions, and any other questions related to this process.

Current deadlines for questionnaire customization are September 1 for implementation in a fall semester and February 1 for implementation in a spring semester.

Data gathered in the Student Course Feedback process covers courses across the entire spectrum offered in the College, including graduate and undergraduate, large and small classes, all course types (e.g. lecture, lab, recitation) and all College disciplines. Analysis of our data points to all of these things (and more) being compounding variables when it comes to the data. As such, the College does not include any College, department, or program aggregate data on instructor or course reports.

Student Course Feedback data is best used as a tool to reflect on the course in the context of its unique circumstances (class composition, class size, class type, class level, discipline, any extenuating outside the classroom circumstances, etc) as it relates to other courses the instructor has taught. Some conclusions can be drawn by comparing data for an instructor or course over time or across sections, but the College discourages comparing instructors to one another. The department chair receives an aggregate report for the department (with breakdowns by subject code where requested), and this data can be shared at their discretion, however the College recommends caution when sharing such data, as there are many confounding variables within it, so a mean or median for the department as a whole will be less useful as a comparison point the more variety there is among your course demographics.