Rules

Purpose

The purpose of the Stanly Community College (SCC) Electronic Course Evaluations Rule is to establish the procedures, logistics, and responsibilities pertaining to the administration of online course evaluations.

 Definitions

1. Administration – describes a cycle of course evaluation instrument distributions that includes a start date and an end date.  The goal of each administration is to offer students an opportunity to provide confidential feedback about their SCC course experiences.
2. Evaluation Instrument – a list of questions designed to garner student opinion about a particular course and instructor. 
3. Manager – the SCC employee responsible for creating, implementing, and monitoring course evaluation administrations.  The manager also ensures clear and effectual course evaluation communication with students, faculty, and instructional supervisors.

 Procedure

A.  Course evaluations are automated through SmartEvals, which synchronizes data daily through SCC’s LMS, Canvas. All courses that have a Canvas component will have a course evaluation generated via SmartEvals. The automated evaluation administration period for each course begins two weeks prior to and ends three days after the individual course end date.

B. Approximately two weeks before the last day of a class, both instructors and students will receive an initial email notification of the course evaluation administration period, followed by five reminder emails spaced no less than 48 hours apart. Once a student completes their evaluation(s), they will no longer receive the reminder emails. The Manager may also announce the start of course evaluation administrations via student calendars, the learning management system landing page, and face-to-face marketing events.  

C. No less than two business days after the end of a course evaluation administration, the Manager will:

• Deliver Faculty Report email messages that include links to faculty reports;
• Announce Faculty Report availability to instructional supervisors;
• Select and notify student drawing prize winner(s); and
• Acquire permission from each winner to announce each prize winner’s name.

 Instructors and supervisors have ongoing access to all course evaluation results through their SmartEvals myEval Center.

Additional Information

1. Student identity is not linked to responses.  Student responses are confidential, and the Manager collects them via a third-party provider.  They are summarized and reported to faculty without student identifiers after the term is over and grades are posted.
2. SCC Faculty Senate, eLearning personnel, instructional supervisors, and/or specific program faculty and instructors authorize evaluation instruments.  The Manager will help design question items, if requested.  Stakeholders review evaluation instruments regularly to ensure that questions are pertinent to continuous improvement of instruction.
3. Not all academic programs are conducive to online course evaluations.  Program Heads (Curriculum, Occupational Extension, and Self-Support) are responsible for notifying the Manager of a desired change in online course evaluation status (e.g. a change from not utilizing the system to utilizing the system) or the need to revise an existing evaluation instrument or to create a new evaluation instrument.

Revisions: 05/01/2017, 03/25/2019

References:    

SACSCOC Core Requirement 7.1, Institutional planning

SACSCOC Core Requirement 8.1, Student achievement

SACSCOC Standard 8.2.a, Student outcomes: educational programs

SACSCOC Standard 8.2.b, Student outcomes: general education

SACSCOC Standard 8.2.c, Student outcomes: academic and student services

1B SBCCC 400.2 College Planning