Student Evaluation of Faculty Overview
Reed uses two different instruments to obtain student feedback:
- Scantron’s Class Climate system assures anonymity for both the quantitative evaluations and the comments for the instructor.
- Qualtrics allows us to meet the opposite requirement for the Committee on Advancement and Tenure (CAT) — that students’ written feedback include their names.
These systems email students separately at their Reed addresses. Students should check their spam folders if they can’t locate the emails.
Both Class Climate and Qualtrics send weekly reminders until students complete their evaluations.
A. Quantitative Questions and Comments for the Instructor
Students receive a consolidated email from Class Climate containing different links to the quantitative questions and instructor comments for each course.
- Class Climate messages come from Class Climate Admin <dean.fac@reed.edu> with “Faculty Evaluations are Open” in the subject line.
- Students should expect multiple links in Class Climate emails — one for each course, or two or more for courses requiring extra lecture evaluations. Each link leads to a unique survey they should complete.
- Once a student starts an evaluation, the course and instructor appear at the top of every screen as a student progresses through the survey. Because Class Climate collects results without connecting them to the evaluator, students should make sure their feedback is for the right course. This protects the accuracy of the process.
- Students must click submit to complete the survey.
- Students can then return to the original Class Climate email and select the link for the next evaluation.
B. Responses for the Committee on Advancement and Tenure (CAT)
Students receive a separate Qualtrics email for each course, containing a single link to evaluate that course only. If a course is co-taught, Qualtrics sends a different email for each instructor.
- Qualtrics messages come from Dean of the Faculty’s Office <dean.fac@reed.edu> with “Reed faculty evaluation” plus the course title and instructor name in the subject line.
- The course and instructor appear near the top of the first and second pages of the evaluation.
- Students may click the save button to preserve their progress, and return to the evaluation using the link in the original email.
- Once they’ve saved, students must click the submit button for Qualtrics to record the evaluation.