Frequently Asked Questions
- General Information
- About the Evaluations
- Evaluation Results
General Information
In Fall 2010, with Faculty Senate and Provostial approval, Stony Brook adopted an online course evaluation system that began during the Spring 2011 semester. This adoption was preceded by a pilot test of the system in Fall 2010 involving 200 course sections and significant discussion with stakeholder groups across the University.
At this time, the system is in place for all West campus courses. All undergraduate and graduate courses will be evaluated online, unless department chairpersons designate courses that should not be evaluated (such as dissertation, readings, small seminars, etc.)
The system is hosted by an external company which provides an extensive set of services including the survey engine, question banks, pre-created analysis and reports of the survey results, as well as a system for managing survey assignments and email reminders to faculty and students. The system is accessible via any Web browser from any Internet-connected computer.
Faculty and students will automatically receive email notifications and instructions before and during each of the following events.
- Instructors will be given 7-10 days before the evaluation period starts to prepare their own customized questions and add them to the evaluation system.
- Student access to the course evaluations will start during the final third of a course (approximately four weeks before for full semester courses), and will end the last day of the official final examination period.Students will receive multiple email reminders during this period if at least one course evaluation remains uncompleted.
All instructors and teaching assistants listed as primary and secondary instructors in PeopleSoft/SOLAR are evaluated. If a faculty member manages a course, but does not teach it, he or she should be listed in the SUP field in PeopleSoft to prevent an evaluation being assigned.It is very important that instructor information for courses be correct in PeopleSoft prior to the beginning of each evaluation period or faculty may not get evaluated or the wrong instructor may be evaluated for a course.
All instructional staff who are assigned as Primary Instructors or Secondary Instructors are evaluated, including TAs. It is important for academic departments to enter TA teaching assignments accurately and in a timely manner in order for the course evaluations to be accurately assigned, usually within the first 4 weeks of the semester. If your courses are not listed or you are listed as teaching the wrong course, please contact your department administrator to make the changes in SOLAR and contact the CELT Course Evaluation Team to make corrections in the course evaluation system:CourseEval@stonybrook.edu
Evaluations are assigned based on the data entered by departmental staff in SOLAR. Please contact the appropriate staff member in your department to ensure that your correct teaching assignments are up to date before each semester's evaluation period begins. If you are assigned an evaluation for a course that you are not teaching or have not been assigned to a course that you are teaching, please contact the person in your department who is responsible for maintaining faculty teaching assignments in Peoplesoft/SOLAR. Then, that person needs to contact the CELT Course Evaluation Team: CourseEval@stonybrook.edu
Yes, policies and procedures determined all courses including low enrollment will automatically be evaluated except those designated as TUTorial or SUPervisory or CLN (clinical).
However, faculty and departments can choose to evaluate these courses by submitting an exception request. To access the exception form, click here. Please note you must be logged in to your Stony Brook Google account to complete the form.
The system administers separate evaluations for all instructors in the course. Common questions such as those focused on the learning space are delivered only one time to each student within each course.
Technical support regarding login, navigation, incorrect instructor assignments, adding custom questions, downloading reports/data, and interpreting results is available to all users. Please email CourseEval@stonybrook.edufor details.
About the Evaluations
The current list of course evaluation questions was developed by a faculty committee, reviewed by Undergraduate Council, Graduate Council, Undergraduate Program Directors, Undergraduate Student Government and Graduate Student Organization for feedback, and approved by the University Senate in Fall 2013.
The following questions appear on all course evaluations:
- Overall, I would give this course a grade of...[A-F, 5-point scale]
- The instructor was effective in teaching the subject matter [5-point scale SA(5) to SD(1)]
- Instructor expectation of students is reasonable. [5-point scale: SA(5) to SD(1)]
- The grading was based on the requirements stated in the syllabus. [Scale: Agree / Grading did not match the syllabus / There was no syllabus / I did not read the syllabus / I don’t know]
- The textbook, readings and required resources were valuable. [Scale: Agree / Disagree / I did not read the required materials / No text, readings or resources were required]
- Did the use of the required textbooks, readings or resources sufficiently justify their cost? [Scale: Agree / Sufficiently used but not worth the cost / Not sufficiently used / No cost required / I did not read the required materials]
- What is your reason for taking this course? [Scale: Gen Ed requirement / Major requirement / Minor requirement / Upper-division credit / Personal interest / Other (please specify)]
- What is the most effective way to contact the instructor outside of class? [Scale: Office Hours / Before or After Class / Email / Telephone / I Never Contacted the Instructor / Other (please specify)]
- On average, how many hours per week did you spend on this course outside of class? [Scale: 0-3 hours / 4-6 hours / 7-9 hours / 10+ hours]
- My anticipated grade in this class is: [Scale: A,B,C,D,F,P,S,U, I Don’t Know]
- How often did you attend this class? [Scale: Always /Most of the time / About half the time / Before exams / Very infrequently]
- What, if anything, did you find most valuable about this course? (Open)
- In what ways, if any, could the course be improved? (Open)
Yes, faculty can their own questions. You can add questions from the question bank or, submit a question to be added. If you choose a question from the question bank, you will need to select it each semester.
Requests for new questions not already in the question bank must be submitted at least three business days prior to the survey becoming active.
Deans, Department Chairs, or their designated administrators can add questions for all courses in a department (see steps 6-9). To request questions be added for all current and future sections of a specific course (e.g. WRT102), please contact courseeval@stonybrook.edu
Evaluation Results
The evaluation data is made available approximately 15 days after the evaluation period ends to ensure that all grades have been submitted. While the Registrar's grade submission guidelines ask for grades to be submitted 72 hours after final exams, many faculty do not submit grades for several weeks. Consequently, results are delayed until the Registrar indicates that all grades have been submitted.
Faculty are able to review their own evaluation reports, including student comments, before they are published to the university community, by logging into Course Evaluations.
After reviewing student feedback from the evaluation reports, faculty may request redaction of any comments that harass, threaten, defame, slander or otherwise fall outside the scope of the course by submitting a request to the department chair.
Year Administration Term Evaluations to be completed Evaluations completed Completion Rate 2022 Fall 119089 34,838 29.25% Summer I 8062 1790 22.20% Summer I Extended 2029 461 22.72% Summer II & II Extended 8783 1741 19.82% Spring 108974 30649 28.13% Winter 3613 866 23.97% 2021 Fall 121951 36770 30.15% Summer I 7765 1845 23.76% Summer I Extended 1403 257 18.32% Summer II & II Extended 8674 2069 23.85% Spring 109035 30530 28.00% Winter 3192 846 26.50% 2020 Fall 119453 40896 34.24% Summer I 7403 2575 34.78% Summer I Extended 1380 501 36.30% Summer II & II Extended 8861 2700 30.47% Spring 107886 47048 43.61% Winter 3274 486 14.84% 2019 Fall 116082 39967 34.43% Summer I 6580 1915 29.10% Summer I Extended 1153 245 21.25% Summer II & II Extended 7485 1739 23.23% Spring 106198 43414 40.88% Winter 3393 517 15.24% 2018 Fall 118832 54773 46.09% Summer I 7118 2053 28.84% Summer I Extended 1263 302 23.91% Summer II & II Extended 7320 1695 23.16% Spring 105745 45751 43.27% Winter 3028 989 32.66% 2017 Fall 117795 57598 48.90% Summer I 6639 2121 31.95% Summer I Extended 1562 627 40.14% Summer II & II Extended 6773 2148 31.71% Spring 103016 45869 44.49% Winter 2625 858 32.69% 2016 Fall 114661 57739 50.36% Summer 1 6723 2068 30.76% Summer II 7064 1905 26.97% Summer 1 Extended 1776 419 23.59% Spring 103305 45508 44.05% Winter 2373 804 33.88% 2015 Fall 111181 55551 49.96% Summer 1 7271 2234 30.77% Summer II 6839 1788 26.14% Summer 1 Extended 1562 480 30.73% Spring 103276 47868 46.35% Winter 1932 720 37.27% 2014 Fall 109972 50950 46.33% Summer 1 7207 2168 30.08% Summer II 113 57 50.44% Summer 1 Extended 1272 335 26.34% Spring 104422 43955 42.09% Winter 2389 690 28.88% 2013 Fall 107730 41094 38.15% Summer 1 8051 1831 22.74% Summer II 6067 1294 21.33% Summer 1 Extended 727 82 11.28% Spring 102222 0 0.00% Winter 2241 302 13.48% 2012 Fall 103941 0 0.00% Summer 16107 3920 19.57% Spring 96597 25534 20.91% Winter 2358 570 19.47% 2011 Fall 102390 3346 24.62% Summer 17871 2817 13.62% Spring 98907 25619 20.57% Course evaluation results will be emailed to faculty and approved reviewers after the survey concludes and grades are posted. Approved reviewers can access the evaluation results of all the faculty within a department and generally tend to be department chairs or their designees. Should chairs wish to designate additional reviewers they should email a request which includes the reviewer's 9-digit Stony Brook ID Number to CourseEval@stonybrook.edu
The evaluation data will remain online as long as the University maintains its contract with this vendor. Each semester, all Stony Brook results are exported and stored in the data warehouse along with all previous course evaluation results so that faculty course summaries will always be available.
When the online system was being considered by faculty, conversations were conducted with student government and they told us that many students rely on public "rate-my-professor" websites to make course decisions and expressed instead the desire to see Stony Brook's instructor ratings to make informed course choices. Subsequently, the University Faculty Senate approved a motion to make course evaluation data available to students.
