The Q is a great example of a win-win collaboration: students' evaluations are aggregated into the Q Guide (formerly the CUE Guide), an important student resource during shopping week - and faculty can tailor questions and learn from valuable student insight.
The Q Evaluations
The Q evaluations provide important student feedback about courses and faculty. Many questions are multiple choice, though there's room for comments as well. The more specific a student can be about an observation or opinion, the more helpful their response. Q data help students select courses and supplement Harvard's Courses of Instruction, shopping period visits to classes and academic advising.
Faculty take these evaluations seriously - more than half logged on to view their students' feedback last spring within a day of the results being posted. The Q strengthens teaching and learning, ultimately improving the courses offered at Harvard.
Your voice counts.
History of the Q
The history of course evaluation at Harvard College dates back to 1925, when The Crimson first solicited student responses regarding some of the largest courses. Originally this compilation was known as the Confidential Guide of College Courses, later popularly known as the Confi Guide. In 1973 the Committee on Undergraduate Education began to formalize the process of course evaluations. In 1975 the CUE published their first course guide, popularly known as the CUE Guide.
In 2005 the CUE moved from a paper form distributed in class to an online response system. Significant changes were made to the form in 2006, when the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences fully merged their course evaluation systems. The Q was then renamed because the evaluations were no longer run solely by the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE). Today the Q system is used to evaluate nearly 1000 courses and more than 2000 faculty and section leaders each term.
Organization of the Q
The Q is coordinated by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard College Institutional Research Office.