Overview
This service level agreement defines OIT responsibilities as well as client responsibilities with respect to web-based Exam Scheduler; the agreement also addresses common questions and procedures.
Step-by-step guide
OIT Responsibilities
OIT will complete routine requests within 5 business days. If your unit has a time-sensitive request, please notifyevaluations@franklin.uga.edu as quickly as possible. If your request cannot be completed within 4 business days, you will be contacted promptly with an explanation and a projected completion date.
In order to ensure that your evaluation is prepared on time, please use the following table to determine deadlines for providing critical information to OIT staff members:
| Task | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Loading Course Lists To ensure that the correct students are given access to the correct evaluation, administrators should submit a list of courses to OIT for processing (see below for format) | 5 business days before start date of evaluation |
| Opening an Evaluation In order to open an evaluation, administrators should submit a date and time to open each evaluation | 2 business days before start date of evaluation |
| Editing an Existing Evaluation In order to modify any of the questions on an evaluation form, the new format (which must be vetted, see below) should be submitted to OIT in order to implement the changes | 15 business days before start date of evaluation |
Client Responsibilities
Please become familiar with UGA policies on End of Term Course Evaluations and Midterm Course Evaluations.
UGA policies regarding course evaluations can be found by visiting the following links:
Identify Primary Unit Administrators
Please identify your primary unit level course evaluations administrator; this individual will be responsible for conveying unit decisions to the Franklin College application developer. Units may have multiple administrators if desired. If your primary unit level administrator changes, please notify us promptly. It is preferred that the unit administrator be a non-faculty member of the unit’s staff in order to minimize conflicts of interest.
Approve New Changes to Evaluation
When a unit intends to make changes to an evaluation, these changes should be approved by the department head before submitting the change to OIT. It is the department head’s responsibility to ensure that these changes meet the standards and needs of the faculty in their unit.
Provide Course Lists to Be Evaluated
Please submit all course evaluation requests through the Course Evaluation Load Request Form.
Administrator Tasks
The following tasks may be completed via the administration interface available athttps://www.franklin.uga.edu/evaluation/admin/login.php
- Edit course roll data (enrolled students) at the unit level. We usually download course rolls after the mid-point to minimize editing. For example, by waiting until after the midpoint, we minimize the need for admins to remove students who drop the course late in the term.
- Coordinate dates with OIT for load time of an evaluation, start time, and end time. See above for appropriate deadlines. A note regarding dates: if a time is not provided, an evaluation opens at 12:01 am on the start date; if a time is not provided, an evaluation will be closed at 11:59 pm on the day previous to the end time.
- Manage the course list for the unit, which includes the following:
- Remove extraneous classes (directed study, research, or breakout sessions)
- Set instructors for breakout sessions/labs, if they are to be evaluated
- Clone courses, where needed, for example, when there are multiple instructors for a course that need to be evaluated separately
- Export evaluation data to Excel, when necessary, sharing the resulting file with cross-evaluating units, where appropriate
- Monitor course evaluation turnout during evaluation period
- Email students who have not yet completed evaluations for the unit, if desired, to prompt their participation. Generally, we do not provide results to faculty until after the due date for submitting grades.
- Handle exception cases for units, such as students who require paper evaluations, students who want to turn in an evaluation after the closing time, or instructors who need to close an evaluation early, etc.
To request assistance with any of these tasks, please email evaluations@franklin.uga.edu
Summary of Course Evaluations Web Addresses
- For admins: https://www.franklin.uga.edu/evaluation/admin/
- For faculty/instructors/TAs: https://www.franklin.uga.edu/evaluation/instructors/
All use secure MyID authentication.
Frequently Requested Answers
Web-based course evaluations are anonymous although it may be possible to guess the identity of students by writing style especially in small course sections. This is true in the paper-based format as well.
As per Franklin College policy, clients are stewards of their own course evaluation data. If OIT receives a request for your data, we will forward the request to you.
Mid-term evaluations are available. Please email evaluations@franklin.uga.edu no later than one full week before the start date of the mid-term evaluation. Due to the later withdraw deadline, OIT recommends monitoring course rolls more closely for mid-term evaluations than end-of-term evaluations. For small classes (and short timeframes), course evaluation administrators may want to create and populate the class themselves; however, for large classes, it is usually faster for OIT to provide this service.
Units will have access to raw data in addition to averages, standard deviations, and aggregate response rates provided by the system.
Response Rates
Although there is a lot of variability between courses, the overall response rate for web-based course evaluations is over 50%.
Here is a summary of some strategies that are being used to increase response rates:
Some faculty offer incentives such as extra credit on the final exam.
Some units increase the amount of time students have to complete the evaluation so faculty may provide students with in-class reminders over a period of several weeks.
Anecdotally, students seem more receptive to verbal reminders than e-mail reminders.
Some units schedule evaluations in computer labs.
Some professors allow students to leave a few minutes early if they promise to complete evaluations.
Units get the best response rates when faculty are advocates of the web-based model and reiterate the importance of the evaluations to their students.
For more information on getting better response rates, the following resources may be useful:
- Franklin – Success in Online Course Evaluations
- UGATEACH listserv (Subscribe by emailing the following command ‘subscribe ugateach FirstName LastName’ to listserv@listserv.uga.edu)
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