Fact Page for Students: Fall 2009 Online Subject Evaluations

MIT is moving its central subject evaluation system online and away from paper-based forms. By Fall 2010, the entire central subject evaluation system will be online. Approximately 460 subjects will be participating in the online subject evaluation pilot for Fall 2009.

WHAT do you have to do?

At any time within the evaluation period (see key dates on left), simply visit this site, click Evaluate Subjects in the upper right hand corner, and follow the directions. All questions are voluntary; it’s OK to skip some. You can save part of your evaluation and complete the rest at any point within the response period. You can also go back and edit your answers until the response period ends. Once you've answered at least one question for each of your evaluations, you’ll no longer get email reminders to complete them.

WHO can take the online evaluations?

Students who are both registered for credit and have certificates installed on their web browser can take the evaluations for subjects which are participating in the online pilot. Kerberos IDs are necessary to obtain web certificates, which authenticate students on the MIT network so that they can complete evaluations online. For students who have an @mit.edu email address, the Kerberos ID is everything to the left of the @ sign; e.g., for smith@mit.edu, the Kerberos ID is smith. (Learn how to obtain a Kerberos ID.)

WHERE can you see the results?

Results from the online pilot subjects will be available to students and other members of the MIT community by visiting this site and clicking View Results in the upper right hand corner (or going directly to http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation/results.html), in January.

WHY should you bother?

Because your responses are extremely useful to:

Your instructors, to modify and improve the approach, pedagogy and content of the subject for the future, and to see what their students thought was most useful.
Departments, for faculty promotion and tenure, accreditation, and, curricular changes, for example. Good evaluations can help your instructor receive raises, awards, promotions, and (for teaching assistants) jobs. If your instructor is untenured, he or she will need consistently good student evaluations to get tenure.
Your fellow students, to guide them in their subject selections.

Your contribution to the improvement of MIT’s teaching and curriculum and to the development of this important system for assessment will be much appreciated.

FAQs

My professor says our class is going to be evaluated online, but I didn't get an email/can't log on. Why not?

Students are eligible to take the online evaluations if:

they are registered for credit in the subject.
they have MIT and personal certificates installed on their web browser.

A handful of students who are cross-registered do not have certificates because they don't have MIT email accounts. If you are registered and have certificates but can't log on, please contact se-help@mit.edu.

I don't see my subject/professor listed in the online evaluation results.

The list includes only those subjects and instructors which departments indicated should be evaluated online this term. About half the subjects are still being evaluated using the traditional paper forms during the last day of class. A full list of online-evaluated subjects is available. If you think there is an error, though, please check with your department administrator.

I'm getting reminder emails to take the evaluations, but my professor told me to wait until after the last day of class.

Follow the instructions from your professor. While the response period for the evaluations is two weeks long, many instructors prefer that you wait until the end so you're evaluating the full semester of classroom experience. The evaluations are extended through reading period so you have a bit more time to finish up.

How can I tell which subjects I've already evaluated?

Click on the subject. If you see a check in a box next to an instructor's name, your responses have been saved. You can proceed through the survey if you want to review, edit or change your answers.

I evaluated an instructor and saved my answers, but I changed my mind and don't want to evaluate this person. However, I can't un-check the check box to select this instructor. What do I do?

We don't currently support deselecting instructors once you've answered questions about them. However, you can overwrite your answers by deleting your open-ended comments and changing radio-button answers to N/A, then clicking Save and Continue.

Getting Help

For technical problems (logging in, viewing results, or any other technical assistance matter) contact se-help@mit.edu. General comments and questions about this project can be directed to the project team: se-wtw@mit.edu.