Set up and Customize Evaluation Form

SET UP COURSE EVALUATIONS

All courses with enrollments of 5 or more will automatically be set up for evaluation. Courses with enrollments of less than 5 are not automatically set up for evaluation.

Review my.harvard instructional staff list

The automatic set up of course evaluations relies on correct instructional staff listed in my.harvard. Each semester, departments are asked to review and update/correct instructional staff information in my.harvard before the evaluations go live. Errors in instructional staff can be fixed by the department curriculum point person. (See list of curriculum point person <here>).

  • Sectioned courses must have the correct instructional staff listed for each section.  Adding staff to one section will not automatically add the teaching staff to all the sections for a course.
  • Course heads and other members of the instructional staff who do not teach can be excluded from the evaluation by going into my.harvard and selecting “skip”.

Request Course to be Exempted from Evaluation

If any of the faculty in the department feel their course with an enrollment of 5 or more students should not be evaluated, the department administrator can request an exemption from the evaluation process. Exemption requests are made by  going to my.harvard and marking the course evaluation as “EXEMPT”.  Courses marked with “EXEMPT” will undergo review by the Office of Undergraduate Education or by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  Once granted, exemptions carry forward every semester and you no longer need to make a request.  You will be contacted only if an exempt request is denied.

Request Course Evaluation for Course with Less than 5 enrolled

Courses with enrollments of less than 5 are not automatically set up for evaluation.  If an instructor would like a low enrollment course to be evaluated, the department administrator can override the automated process and set the course to be evaluated.  To do this, go to my.harvard and select the eval attribute “ALWAYS” in my.harvard.  No approval is needed for the “ALWAYS” attribute. Once selected in  my.harvard, the “always” attribute will carry forward every semester.

CUSTOMIZE COURSE EVALUATIONS

The FAS course evaluation form has a standard set of questions about the course and a standard set of questions about each instructor. See evaluation questions below or download a copy of the instrument <<here>>. 

Accordian:  Course Questions

Accordian:   Instructor Questions

The process of customizing a course evaluation is called “Question Personalization” (QP). Through question personalization, course heads can customize their evaluation form with up to 3 questions of their own.  You can add likert scale questions or open-text (comment) questions.

Suggestions for question personalization are displayed below (or download a copy <<here>>). QP  results will appear on the course head’s report.  QP results will not appear on the evaluation reports for other instructional staff and they will not be made publicly available to students or others in the Harvard community with an HUID.

<<text from JB??>> Suggested Questions for Question Personalization:

              Accordian / Link:  JB

              Accordian / Link:  JB

              Accordian / Link:  JB

              Accordian / Link:  JB

Directions for Question Personalization

When you add your questions to the evaluation form, you will first be asked to identify which scale you will use.  After selecting the scale, you will be asked to type in the question text.  You can add up to 3 questions. If you add more than 3 questions, only the first 3 will be included on the evaluation form. 

Open Directions in new tab

Add Questions to the Course Evaluation

Step 1: Go to: https://harvard.bluera.com/harvard/

  Under Tasks there will be a list of courses for Question Personalization (example below):

Step 2: When you click on the course, you will see the following screen.

 

Step 3: On the drop-down menu at the top next to "View All", click the down arrow and then click “View Customizable”.

You will see all the scales available for adding personalized questions. You can add up to 3 personalized questions.

Step 4: Click the Customize icon next to the type of question you want to add. You will see the Question editor below.

Step 5: Type in the text in the box with the cursor under the text Question.

Step 6: After you type the question text at the cursor, click the “X” in the upper right corner when you are done.

Step 7: After you click the “X”, the question you typed in will have a green toggle switch saying “Included”.

Step 8: You can click “Preview” to view the course evaluation form including the added personalized questions.

Step 9: You can click “Save” if you are not finished and want to return to edit the questions.

Step 10:  If you enter more than 3 personalized questions, all of your questions will not appear on the course evaluation.

Step 11: When you have completed all of your personalized questions, click the blue “Submit “button to finalize and submit so that questions appear on course evaluation.

If you do not click “Submit”, the personalized questions marked “Include”, will not appear on the course evaluation.

The “Submit” button appears at the top and the bottom of the page.

Copy questions between your courses

If you have multiple courses, you can copy personalized questions between your courses. This can save you a lot of time and effort in rewriting applicable questions that you have added to previous evaluations.

You will have two copy options:

  • Copy selection from - Allows you to copy questions you have already selected in a different course to this evaluation.
  • Copy selections to - Allows you to copy questions you have selected in this evaluation to one or several of your other courses.

Copy selections to

When you have completed a question personalization task, you can copy the selections and personalized questions you made to one or several other courses.

  1. Click Copy Options from the Question Personalization menu.    copy_icon
  2. Select Copy Selections To. A window will appear named Copy selections to.
  3. Search for the course name you wish to copy the questions to and select it by checking the box in front of the course.

Copy_selections_to

  1. Choose to only copy the questions, or copy and submit the task immediately.
  2. Select Copy to finalize the process.

CAUTION

Choosing to copy and submit can save you the step of manually submitting a task for each course one by one. However, this also means you cannot review or modify the questions in the task after it has been submitted.

copy_selections_to_p2

Copy selection from

If you have already completed a question personalization task for a different course, you can copy the same selections and personalized questions from that course to the one you are currently completing.

  1. Click Copy Options from the Question Personalization menu.  copy_icon_02
  2. Select Copy Selections From . A window will appear named Copy selections from.
  3. Search for the course name you wish to copy the questions from and select it.

copy_selections_from

  1. Select Copy to finalize the process.
  2. Review the task with the copied questions before submitting.

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