Course Evaluation

Students will be invited via email to complete a course evaluation once 75% of the course learning experience has been completed. The administration period will differ for each course, depending on the length of the course and when it is scheduled within a semester.  You will be given a set window of time to complete your course evaluation(s), and an automatic reminder email will be sent before the administration closes to notify you of any incomplete surveys on your Course Evaluation Student Dashboard.

It's important to evaluate each course in your Course Evaluations Student Dashboard (and not just the ones you particularly like or dislike). When student response rates are low, instructors risk getting an inaccurate or biased sample of responses and feedback which does not accurately or completely represent the diversity of student opinions and experiences. It is difficult for educators to make sense of a small or incomplete sample of responses. For feedback to be taken seriously, it needs to be complete, honest, and respectful to the people who are working hard to provide you with high quality teaching and learning experiences.

Real people within our SLC community will read and review your course evaluations. Even though your responses are confidential, it is not an invitation to oppress others with hurtful or discriminatory language based on sexual or gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, or disability. Rather, it is an opportunity to share behaviours, actions, or experiences that you particularly enjoyed, valued, and benefitted from, as well as specific recommendations for actionable improvements: what additions or changes could have enhanced your learning experience and why? Here is a helpful guide for making sure your feedback is constructive, and not destructive to others.

Constructive Feedback

• Is thoughtfully crafted with care, humility, and growth in mind  

• Uses evidence in support of observations 

• States the impact of actions and/or experiences on you personally and/or academically (i.e., consequences: positive or negative) and not on behalf of classmates

• Indicates what actions and/or experiences are preferrable 

• Suggests specific opportunities for growth and improvements 

Destructive Feedback

• Is emotional, aggressive, or insulting   

• Consists of general of vague comments, unsupported with specific evidence (examples)

• Blames , undermines, belittles, finds fault, or diminishes the recipient of the feedback 

• Gives no guidance for making improvements 

We all hold implicit biases, which are unconscious beliefs and mindsets about people and their capacities, that we learn over time from our families, our community, media, and social media. In order to evaluate your courses fairly, you need to be aware of prejudices and stereotypes which could influence how you respond to the questions asked for each of your courses. For example, research has shown that students tend to give female educators lower ratings than male educators. However, your educator's gender, race, sexual identity or religion should not impact the quality of educational experiences they are able to provide in the classroom. Remember that course evaluations will have an impact on real people in our SLC community. To respond fairly, you need to take the opportunity to reflect upon and isolate your own implicit biases. We all have them, so let's do our part and respond fairly!

You can access your course evaluations in several ways: 

1. By clicking on the link to any email communication sent from courseval@sl.on.ca. This email will prompt you to log in to your Student Course Evaluation dashboard using your SLC username and password (i.e., your single sign-on); 

2. By logging into Blackboard, under “My Dashboard”, you will see a Course Evaluation section; and 

3. By logging into SLC.me, you can directly access your Student Course Evaluation dashboard. 

We anticipate that each course evaluation should take between 10-15 minutes to complete, depending on the depth of responses you provide to the narrative/open-text questions.

Yes, you have the option to save your responses in progress and pick-up where you left off. Be sure to fully complete the page you are working on and advance to the next before leaving the dashboard.

Yes, you may edit your responses within the course evaluation administration window. However, once the window of time has closed, you will not be able to edit your responses.

No, this is not spam. This is the email address we are using at SLC to administer course evaluation emails and reminders to all program leadership, faculty and students.

See the "NEED HELP" section for various ways to communicate with the course evaluation team

Course evaluation items cover domains that are important to high-quality teaching and learning. These domains can include questions gathering your perspectives.

• The connection between the course/program learning outcomes and the assessments/activities;

• The culture and safety of the learning environment;

• Opportunities for participation in/reflection on active learning;

• Use of diverse authentic assessment strategies;

• The provision of constructive feedback; and

• Effective use of digital learning technologies.

The questionnaire will include closed- and open-ended questions.  

Closed-ended (selected response) questions

Closed-ended (selected response) questions often take the form of Likert-scale items, which ask you about your level of agreement with specific statements on a four-point scale (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 

Open-ended (constructed response) questions

Open-ended (constructed response) questions often ask you to provide additional overall feedback (i.e., constructive comments) to your course instructor about what you would like to see more of (i.e., start doing), what you would like to see them continue in their future teaching, and what was not particularly helpful or useful to your learning (i.e., stop doing).