A message about the upcoming administration of fall 2021 course evaluations.
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
Student evaluations of teaching are one of several means by which teaching is assessed at the College, and they provide input to faculty members to develop and revise their courses. Faculty members are encouraged to consider their evaluations in judging the effectiveness of their teaching (see Faculty Handbook Section 4.2.1.1).
As in the 2020-21 academic year, the standard College evaluation form will be administered to students in all fall 2021 lecture, laboratory, and seminar courses with an enrollment of five or greater through the web-based evaluation tool CoursEval. Evaluations will be open between Nov. 29 and Dec. 10. A few weeks after grades are submitted at the end of the semester, faculty members will be notified when they can view and download their course evaluation reports.
Please be sure to set aside time to administer course evaluations at the beginning of a class session during the open evaluation period to obtain better response rates and a more representative class sample. As CoursEval is a web-based platform, please inform your students about when you are planning to administer evaluations in class and remind them to bring a web-enabled device with them. Administering the online course evaluations completely outside class time or at the end of class are generally less effective practices.
Per Section 4.2.1.1.2.1 in the Faculty Handbook, faculty members who wish to refrain from using the standard College evaluation form must communicate their reason in writing to the Provost’s Office at provostoffice@lafayette.edu. Please do so by Friday, Nov. 5, so that the course evaluation administration team is notified in sufficient time.
Please also consider administering anonymous mid-course evaluations if you have not already and consulting the CITLS resource on this topic.
If you have questions about course evaluations, visit courseevals.lafayette.edu. If you cannot find the answer there, please feel free to contact us at courseevals@lafayette.edu.
All the best,
John Meier
Provost
Course Evaluation Manager
courseevals@lafayette.edu
Millie Smith
Academic Project Coordinator
Course Evaluation Manager Assistant
courseevals@lafayette.edu