Course evaluations

After you submit an evaluation, you cannot access it to make changes or delete it. However, if you accidentally submit an evaluation for the wrong professor/course, please contact evals@unr.edu.

Yes, evaluations are completely anonymous, and neither your numerical answers to university-wide, college, or department questions nor your written comments will have identifying information.

When you log in to www.unr.edu/evaluate, you'll see which courses you still have to evaluate. However, you will also receive an email acknowledgement after submitting a course evaluation, and during the evaluation session, you'll receive email reminders for the specific courses that you have not yet evaluated and an indication of how many days you have left to do so.

You will evaluate each professor and TA listed for your courses in each semester. If you have a course that includes both a lecture and a separate lab or discussion section, then you'll receive evaluation forms for both, and if you have a team-taught course, then you'll receive evaluation forms for each professor. However, not all University courses are eligible for evaluation.

University courses are evaluated before final exams are administered. At the end of the fall and spring semesters, students are given 10 days to evaluate courses, and all evaluations are closed at 11:59 p.m. on Prep Day.

If you're enrolled in a shorter course that meets for fewer than 15 weeks (a so-called dynamically dated course), you'll generally be able to access the evaluation system during the last 5-7 days or so of the course. 

Students enrolled in Wintermester courses will also have about a week to evaluate their courses. Whatever the evaluation period assigned to your course, you will always receive an email alerting you when evaluations are available for you to fill out.

Without student feedback, faculty cannot gauge the effectiveness of many aspects of their courses: assignments, readings, grading standards applied to student work, student learning outcomes and course objectives, and which parts of the curriculum students found particularly challenging or rewarding. Evaluations offer students the opportunity to express their opinions about such matters and to engage in a feedback loop of value to multiple individuals. By providing faculty with insight into a current course, students help determine the direction of that course for their peers in following semesters.

On any computer, smart phone, or tablet, simply go to www.unr.edu/evaluate and log in with your NetID and password. So long as you're enrolled in courses that are eligible for evaluation, and you access the site during an open evaluation session, you shouldn't encounter any problems logging in. If you do, however, contact evals@unr.edu.

Students who do not submit ALL of their course evaluations by 11:59 p.m. on Prep Day (Wednesday before finals begin) will be unable to view their final course grades in MyNEVADA until after the deadline for faculty to submit all grades.  

Please refer to the Academic Calendar for exact dates and deadlines. However, if all course evaluations are submitted by 11:59 p.m. on Prep Day, you will be able to see your grades in real-time in MyNEVADA as faculty submit them.

Faculty closely read course evaluations at the end of every semester and the University will begin advertising for students how departments and degree programs use student opinions in these evaluations to revise courses and curricula.

Two factors determine which courses will be evaluated through the online system:

1. Location and academic calendar. Courses meeting during fall, spring, summer, and Wintermester terms are eligible for online course evaluations, provided that they meet the requirements below. In general, School of Medicine and USAC courses will not be enrolled for evaluation through "Nevaluations." However, graduate interdisciplinary programs involving an academic department on the main campus and the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine will use the online system for their courses.
2. Size and course type. Any course or section with 3 or fewer students enrolled will be excluded from evaluation for the sake of preserving student anonymity. Independent study, thesis/dissertation, senior thesis, research or directed readings, comprehensive exam preparatory courses and graduate advisement courses will also be excluded.

Evaluation periods are assigned at the beginning of each term, based on course data available in PeopleSoft (MyNevada).

• Dynamically dated courses (courses meeting for fewer than 15 weeks) are typically assigned evaluation periods of 5-7 days, depending on the length of the class.
• In the the fall and spring, regular, 15-week courses will be evaluated in the final evaluation session of the semester. These evaluation sessions at the end of the fall and spring will be open for 10 days and will close at 11:59 p.m. on Prep Day.
• In the summer, "First Summer Session" courses ending in early July are typically evaluated in one period
• "Regular" and "Second Summer Session" courses ending in August are evaluated in a second period, although all eligible dynamic courses are assigned an evaluation period.

When an evaluation period opens, the instructor of record and all enrolled students receive an automated email that evaluations are accessible at the evaluation website. 

Given that students are asked to evaluate the instructor, as well as the course, and that instructors are given access to evaluation results for their courses, department schedulers must ensure that the correct instructors of record, including Teaching Assistants, are assigned to their courses in MyNEVADA.

For every evaluation session, course data, including instructor and student information, is uploaded from PeopleSoft into the course evaluation software, and it will not be possible for IT representatives or the Office of the Provost to verify that faculty, TAs, etc. are listed accurately.

Chairs and Deans can simply log in with their NetIDs and passwords to www.unr.edu/evaluate. You may use any computer or mobile device, and this is the same URL given to faculty and students.

Department and college/division administrators have permissions in their accounts to track response rates (i.e., how many students have submitted evaluations) by department and college and to view the evaluation results for multiple courses.

Chairs may view evaluation results for every course taught within their respective departments, and Associate Deans and Deans may view the results for every course taught within their respective colleges, divisions, or schools.

On the "Reports" tab of your home page, select "Status Tracking" from the drop-down menu.

You can then choose to view the number of surveys submitted by a bar graph or by total number per course or department, depending on your permissions level.

Viewing Evaluations for Multiple Courses

Whenever you have the option to select a "form," choose "Spring 2015." This was the final evaluation form agreed upon by the Faculty Senate in early 2015.

Option 1: Use "Report Browser"

On the "Reports" tab of your home page, select "Report Browser" from the drop-down menu:

Here you can filter a list of courses by term, college, department, instructor, and course, and either check an individual course (this will take you to the Ratings Summary page for that course or select multiple courses then click the "Create Batch File" link,.

If you click "Create Batch File," you will be given two option:

1. "Batch PDF Report." Allows you to download and print both quantitative and qualitative results.
2. "Batch Quantitative Results." Allows you to download and print an Excel spreadsheet.

Option 2: Create a Rollup Report

In the "Questions" option below, choose "All."

On the "Reports" tab of your home page, select "Rollup Report" from the drop-down menu:

Here you can produce a tabulated report of the number of students who responded to each question within each category (or select "common" to view only the results for institution-wide questions), the percentage of those answering 0-4 on each question, and the mean response to each question.

You have two main bodies of search criteria:

1. Under "Drill Down," you can use the search criteria outlined in the "Summary Report" (term, college, department, course prefix, and number) or
2. Under "Filter," you can qualify your search by degree level (undergraduate or graduate), course level (100- to 700-level courses), class size (enrollment) and course type (e.g., lecture, lab).

For example, if you wish to view the aggregate results for a given college, school, division, or department in a specific semester, use the "Rollup" option and set "Questions" to "All" just above the "Create Report" blue button in the image above.

1. Always select the Spring 2015 form, use the drop-down menu next to "Term" to select "All," and choose your department.
2. If you are a dean, you may select all departments in your college, school, or division (using the drop-down menu next to "Department," select "All"). If you are a chair, your department will be your default and only selection.
3. Select the "Subject" (course prefix) and "Number" in the "Drill Down" column, and add any additional desired criteria under the "Filter" column, if you wish to view specific results. If you wish to view aggregate results for any category, select "All" in its drop-down menu. This will generate the following type of table (in your account, scroll down the page to view results for all questions):

As you can see above the table, you can choose to print the results or export them to an Excel spreadsheet.

If you want to compare student responses to questions over multiple semesters, use the "Rollup" option as well, and set "Questions" to "All" just above the "Create Report" blue button in the image above.

1. Always select the Spring 2015 form, use the drop-down menu next to "Term" to select "All," and choose your department.
2. If you are a dean, you may select all departments in your college, school, or division (using the drop-down menu next to "Department," select "All"). If you are a chair, your department will be your default and only selection.
3. Select the "Subject" (course prefix) and "Number" in the "Drill Down" column, and add any additional desired criteria under the "Filter" column, if you wish to view specific results. If you wish to view aggregate results for any category, select "All" in its drop-down menu. This will generate the following type of table (in your account, scroll down the page to view results for all questions):

As you can see above the table, you can choose to print the results or export them to an Excel spreadsheet.

Finally, if you wish to run a comparative report within one semester, you must use the "Comparison" option, and set "Questions" to "All" just above the "Create Report" blue button in the image above.

1. Always select the Spring 2015 form, use the drop-down menu next to "Term" to select the semester you wish to view, and choose your department.
2. If you are a dean, you may select all departments in your college, school, or division (using the drop-down menu next to "Department," select "All"). If you are a chair, your department will be your default and only selection.
3. Rather than selecting criteria under the "Drill Down" and "Filter" columns, when you choose to run a comparison report, you will see a drop-menu such as that below:
4. Choose a criterion - note that the criteria will change, based on what you initially select under the "Drill Down" and/or "Filter" columns - and click the "Create Report" button below your choices.
5. This produces a color-coded bar chart showing how many students selected 0-4 on each question in the evaluation form. The following example shows a comparison for a single question, using "Course Levels" as the criterion within one college and one department.