Course Evaluation FAQ - Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Page 2 evaluations will be prevented from registering for further courses until they fulfill the course evaluation requirement. Graduating students who do not fill out all course evaluations will have their diplomas withheld, consistent with other school requirements for graduation. We greatly appreciate your participation in the evaluation process, and we give your course feedback significant weight in institutional decision-making. WHY MUST WE COMPLETE ALL COURSE EVALUATIONS? HOW ARE DATA FROM COURSE EVALUATIONS USED? HGSE course evaluations have four primary purposes. The most important of these is to help instructors improve the design of their courses and strengthen their teaching. Other purposes served by the course evaluation are to provide information about courses to students, to encourage student reflection on their own learning, and to be used as part of the professional review process for faculty members. Course evaluations will be posted on myGSE, and hard copies will be made available in Gutman Library. Courses serve a diversity of purposes, and there are many kinds of good courses. The impact of powerful courses — those that generate imagination, creativity, or personal transformations — often cannot be measured by specific questions. For this reason, we encourage you to give full attention to the open-ended questions on the course evaluation. HOW DOES THE ONLINE SYSTEM WORK? At the evaluation website, you will log in using your Harvard ID and PIN for security and will be able to complete course evaluations for each of your courses. This process is convenient and flexible, allowing you to complete the course evaluations at your own pace, across multiple sittings, and when and where you choose. A menu screen will list all the evaluations you need to complete and the due dates for those evaluations. In addition, you will see whether you have previously saved or submitted any evaluation responses for each course. You can view or edit your submitted responses for each course at any time until the closing date for evaluations. WHAT TYPE OF INTERNET BROWSER DO I NEED? The preferred browsers to use when completing online course evaluations are Internet Explorer 6.0 (or higher), Firefox 1.5 (or higher), and Safari. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO COMPLETE AN EVALUATION? We estimate that filling out the evaluation will take about 15 minutes per course. Evaluations for some courses, especially those in which you have interacted with multiple teaching fellows, may take a little longer.
Page 3 HOW LONG CAN I WORK ON AN EVALUATION BEFORE BEING “TIMED OUT” BY THE SYSTEM? Access to the response form will expire in 120 minutes from the time you begin completing an evaluation. Please be sure to save your responses before 120 minutes have elapsed (by clicking the Save/Submit button). You may return to continue to edit a saved course evaluation any time until the closing date for evaluating a course. Please note that once you have timed out, any modifications to your evaluation form response will be lost and you will be prompted to log in again using your Harvard ID and PIN, so be sure to submit or save your work on each course evaluation form before 120 minutes have elapsed. ARE MY RESPONSES CONFIDENTIAL? All responses will be entirely confidential, and no individual identifying information will ever be reported or shared. Instructors and teaching fellows will not receive summary reports of their course evaluations until after all course grades are submitted. Evaluation results are reported only in the aggregate. HOW WILL I EVALUATE MY TEACHING FELLOWS? DO I HAVE TO EVALUATE EVERY TEACHING FELLOW IN COURSES WITH MULTIPLE TEACHING FELLOWS? Although you will be permitted to evaluate any or all of the teaching fellows (TFs) on the course evaluation form, we ask that you evaluate only those TFs with whom you have had meaningful interaction (e.g., as a section leader, as a grader of your work, in office hours). You are the best judge of whether you have had sufficient interaction with a TF to offer a substantive evaluation of their instructional work, so please use your discretion. For any teaching fellows you choose to evaluate, please provide separate responses for each person using his or her individually designated section of the evaluation. If you choose not to evaluate a particular TF, simply leave that person’s designated section of the evaluation form blank. WHOM CAN I CONTACT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? If you experience technical problems while completing your course evaluations online, you may contact the Help Desk in the Learning Technology Center at helpdesk@gse.harvard.edu or (617) 496-0628. Please feel free to contact the Course Evaluation Team at evaluations@gse.harvard.edu with any questions or comments you have about the online course evaluation tool. edited 11-08
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Course Evaluation FAQ - Harvard Graduate School of Education

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