Online Student Evaluations of Teaching
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How are student evaluations of teaching completed?
Students complete evaluations online. Students will receive an email per course, per instructor with a link to an online survey. Students will receive these emails in their UWinnipeg webmail address. The email will include the details of when each survey will close. This email can be expected after the voluntary withdrawal day and before the course end date. Times vary between terms. For more details please see question 12.
2. Why did I not get an online student evaluation of teaching for my course?
There are a variety of reasons you may not have received a SET survey.
- If your class has 4 or fewer students no survey will be issued. This is done to preserve student anonymity.
- Your survey may be in the ‘Focused’ or ‘Other’ folder in your inbox.
- If you set your email to forward to a private email account, it may be in your private emails spam or junk folder.
If you have checked all regular, spam and junk folders and still do not see your survey, it is possible that you clicked a spam link earlier in the term. To test this, please attempt to send an email to your university email from a private email. For example: send an email from student@gmail.com to student-i@webmail.uwinnipeg.ca.
If your university email doesn’t receive the email you sent, contact TSC to have your account reset. You may contact them at servicedesk@uwinnipeg.ca and 204.786.9149.
After your email has been reset, ask setadmin@uwinnipeg.ca to resend your evaluations. Please note that the SET Administrator cannot re-send an evaluation after the final evaluation or exam for your course.
If none of the above is true for you, please email setadmin@uwinnipeg.ca.
3. How many questions does the online student evaluation of teaching have?
There are two questions and one comment section.
- Question 1: The course is: Required or Elective
- Question 2: Overall, apart from the course content, the quality of teaching provided by the above-named instructor was: Unsatisfactory or Satisfactory
- Student Comments:
4. How long does it take to complete the online evaluation?
It takes approximately 5 minutes to complete the evaluation.
5. Are the student evaluations of teaching confidential?
Yes, the evaluations are confidential. Instructors do not receive any information regarding who has completed the evaluations. The information instructors receive includes the following:
- The number of students who answer the course is a required course compared to the number who answer it is an elective course.
- The number of students who say the quality of the teaching provided by the above-named instructor was Unsatisfactory or Satisfactory.
- Any comments the student provides.
6. Do students get class time to complete the student evaluations of teaching?
Instructors may provide class time for students to complete the online course evaluation.
7. What if I don’t have a laptop or mobile device in class to complete the online evaluation?
Students can complete the surveys from home or computers are available in the following areas:
Uplink: 32 Computers
Library: Reference Room Computers – 5 Express Computers are available for short term work
Library: Fifth Floor Computers – 10 computers are available
8. Do students get to see the results of the evaluations?
No, results of the evaluations are not shared with students.
9. What are the benefits of completing the evaluations?
The evaluations help the university maintain a high quality of education for students.
10. Why do you only send the Online Evaluation email to students' Webmail?
Email is sent to the university Webmail email, as all official university correspondence is supposed to be through the university email. Also because of the large volume of email being sent out, using the university email prevents the university from being designated as a SPAM sender.
11. Why did the university move to an online evaluation?
The online evaluation is more sustainable for the university. By moving to the online survey the university saves over 20,000 pages of paper per term. Results can also be provided much quicker to instructors once Senate has approved the grades. With the paper evaluations a staff member needed to spend approximately 120 hours per term scanning the evaluations before the results could be tallied.
12. When is the student evaluation of teaching period?
All evaluations are scheduled to end at 11:59PM on the last day of class.
- For regular courses in the Fall, Fall/Winter, and Winter term the evaluation period is 14 days.
- A course that is 4 weeks or less will have a 3 day evaluation period.
- A course that is longer than 4 weeks but less than a regular term course, will have a 7 day evaluation period.
The SET Administrator will receive notification to schedule evaluations the day after the voluntary withdrawal date for the class. Instructors can expect to receive an email that explicitly states the beginning and end of each course evaluation per term.
13. Who can I contact with any other questions or concerns?
Please contact the SET Administrator at setadmin@uwinnipeg.ca or 204.786.9826.