Course Evaluations for Faculty

The evaluation form captures both quantitative ratings and qualitative comments about courses and instruction

Students can provide candid feedback knowing their identity remains confidential

Yale students can access previous evaluations through Yale Course Search to inform their course selection decisions

Faculty can analyze evaluation results through personalized dashboards to identify strengths and opportunities for growth.

Instructors can add tailored questions to gather specific feedback on new teaching approaches or course element. 

Please note that evaluation responses to questions 1-9 may be made available to students.

1. What knowledge, skills, and insights did you develop by taking this course?

2. Your level of engagement with the course was: (scale: 1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium, 4=high, 5=very high)

3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this course and how could it be improved?

4. What is your overall assessment of this course?

5. The course was well organized to facilitate student learning. (Scale: 1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree)

6. I received clear feedback that improved my learning. (Scale: 1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree)

7. Relative to other courses you have taken at Yale, the level of intellectual challenge of this course was: (Scale: 1=much less, 2=less, 3=same, 4=greater, 5=much greater)

8. Relative to other courses you have taken at Yale, the workload of this course was: (scale: 1=much less, 2=less, 3=same, 4=greater, 5=much greater)

9. Would you recommend this course to another student? Please explain.

Please note that evaluation responses to questions 10-12 will not be made available to students.

10. Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the instructor. In what ways was their teaching effective and in what ways could their teaching be improved?

11. Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the Teaching Fellow. In what ways was their teaching effective and in what ways could their teaching be improved?

12. What is your overall assessment of the Teaching Fellow?

To create a custom question for your course evaluation, log into the custom question section of OCE, select your course from the pull-down menu, type in your question and submit it.

Question submission deadlines and other important dates are listed on line in the OCE schedule. The Registrar will also send notification via e-mail when the system opens for custom question submission.

No. Only faculty can create custom questions.

Yes. You can edit or delete your custom question at any time, up until the system closes for custom question submission.

If elected, the custom question will appear as the thirteenth question on the evaluation, after the twelve standard questions.

Yes. The custom question entry field is limited to 4000 characters.

No. There is only one custom question per course. However, any of the instructors teaching a course may submit the question. The name of the person who submitted the question and the date and time it was submitted is displayed on the entry screen.

Yale College courses with a minimum enrollment of 5 or more students are eligible for evaluation. If the enrollment in your Yale College course is 5 or more and it does not appear on your list, please e-mail evaluate@yale.edu.

Yale College courses with a minimum enrollment of 5 or more students are eligible for evaluation. Graduate School of Arts & Sciences courses with a minimum enrollment of 4 or more students will be eligible for online evaluation.

Individual course instructors may use their own hard-copy evaluation forms if they wish.  However, it will not exempt the students who are enrolled in these courses from evaluating them on line. Online evaluation will be required of all Yale College students who are enrolled in Yale College courses, regardless of whether their instructors have chosen to augment the online evaluations with their own paper evaluation forms.

At the end of each academic term, and once the evaluation submission deadline for students has passed, the University Registrar’s Office will send notification via e-mail to departmental chairs and faculty to announce that evaluations are available for viewing. This email will include a link to the University Registrar’s OCE web page. This page contains OCE FAQs, viewer links, viewer guides and important calendar dates for the OCE system and evaluation process.

The online course evaluation includes two questions pertaining to teaching fellows; questions 11 and 12. All teaching fellows who are recorded as TFs in Banner for an eligible course will be able to view their completed evaluation responses online through the same web-based application used by the faculty, the OCE Faculty Dashboard. Teaching fellows can view evaluation responses to questions 1-9 as well as their individual evaluation responses from questions 11 and 12. Teaching fellows are restricted from viewing evaluation responses pertaining to the course instructor, question 10, and are also restricted from viewing evaluation responses pertaining to their associate teaching fellows for a course.

The OCE Chair viewer limits users to the past five years of evaluation data. However, faculty members can view all their evaluations without a time restriction.

You have the following choices:

1. On the Eval Summary page, you can choose “Export to PDF” to download the graphs.

2. If you are viewing your evaluations by respondent, you can choose “Export This Evaluation” or “Export All Evaluations”.

3. If you are viewing your evaluations by question, you can choose “Export Responses to Selected Questions”.

These options will generate a PDF download that can be saved to your computer.

To print any page within the evaluation:

1. Click on the menu icon in the upper right hand corner.

2. Select Print

3. Select printer or save to PDF file.  Click on the Print button. (Please note, printing preference options will vary due to your browser.  We recommended you turn off headers and footers if available.)

E-mail evaluate@yale.edu with comments and questions.

Once logged in via Yale’s central authentication service (CAS), the faculty dashboard will default to the instructors’ courses and the current term.  Course evaluations are searchable by term, instructor name and/or teaching fellow, subject and course number.

Term:

More than one term can be selected if an instructor is selected.  If an instructor is not selected, only one term can be selected at a time.

Instructor:

To select an instructor/TF, please start typing their name or netid in the Instructor field.  A list of instructors will appear that match the criteria.  Click on the instructor’s name to select.

Subject:

To only display courses within a Subject, please select a Subject from drop down list.

Course Number:

To search for a course, please enter the course number (an instructor is required when a subject is not selected). 

To search across multiple terms, choose “select all” or desired terms from term drop down list.

Partial course number searches are possible. The following searches are acceptable:

1. Partial numbers (such as 95 of 954)
2. 9_4  (any number combination)
3. Section number
4. Subject (in caps)

From the course Summary page (Select a Course > Summary), click on the question row to view the narrative or numeric responses to the question. 

Narrative questions will display “Narrative” under the response column.  Numeric questions will display a histogram under the response column.  Hover over the narrative link or chart to view the response counts.

From the Narrative page (Select a Course > Summary > narrative) or Numeric page (Select a Course > Summary > numeric), click on the Respondent Id link to view the evaluator’s answers to the survey questions.

With the support of the directors of undergraduate studies, the Yale College Committee on Teaching and Learning, the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, and the University Registrar’s Office, and for spring 2020 only, a modified set of questions has been used, which clearly separates evaluations for the period conducted on campus from the period conducted remotely.

Student responses are not viewable by students or by other instructors; they are only viewable by the course instructors, chairs, and deans. They are not used for evaluation purposes for promotions or reappointments.

1. What knowledge, skills, and insights did you develop by taking this course? 
2. For the period on campus before remote learning, what actions did you take that helped your learning in this course? 
3. For the period of remote learning, what actions did you take that helped your learning in this course?   
4. For the period on campus before remote learning, in what ways was [NAME] effective as an instructor and in what ways could the teaching be improved? 
5. For the period of remote learning, what strategies did your instructor use that were helpful? 
6. For the period on campus before remote instruction, in what ways was [GRADUATE STUDENT] effective as a teaching assistant and in what ways could the teaching be improved? 
7. For the period of remote learning,  what strategies did your teaching assistant use that were helpful?