General Information
The Rotman School is committed to ensuring the quality of its academic programs, its teaching, and the learning experiences of its students. An essential component of our commitment to teaching excellence is the regular evaluation of courses by students.
As of Fall 2022 Rotman is using Blue, the University of Toronto’s online course evaluations framework. You will be given a window of time during the last class to complete the evaluation. Feedback may be provided via a tablet, laptop or mobile device.
Your identity remains completely anonymous to instructors and department staff. Evaluations you submit are confidential, and instructors cannot view their reports until after grades have been submitted and the reports have been released. Note that no one at Rotman sees raw data, only summary statistics. Course evaluations are only conducted if there are two or more students enrolled. This is to protect your anonymity. Reports are only released to instructors if there are a minimum of 2 sets of responses.
Why Complete Course Evaluations?
There’s so much going on at the end of term: final exam preparations, job interviews, preparation for internships, etc. Why is it important to provide course feedback?
- It Helps You
Filling out a course evaluation gives you an opportunity to reflect on your progress throughout the course. What have you learned? How far have you come? What parts of the class appealed to you? Which elements did not? Being thoughtful about your experience as a course comes to an end can help you make better decisions when selecting future classes.
- It Helps Your Professors
Thoughtful course evaluations help professors identify what is working in a particular course, and, perhaps even more importantly, what could use improvement. The more detailed you are in your written course evaluations the more information a faculty member has to work with as they restructure and refine future iterations of a course. Evaluations are also customizable, so your professor might include questions specific to your class. Your input is crucial in the successful growth and development of Rotman courses.
- It Helps Your Fellow Rotman Students – Present and Future
Not only does your input help improve Rotman courses but your course evaluations can also assist your peers in making good decisions when they are selecting courses. Your course evaluations represent both your right to have your voice heard and your responsibility to the School and your peers.
Tips for Providing Useful Feedback
Instructors often find that constructive written comments are valuable. To help your instructors get the most out of your written feedback, please keep the following in mind:
- Your instructor is your primary audience for written feedback, and your goal is to help them understand the instructional choices that worked well and less well for your learning. Your feedback can valuably influence the ways they teach this course and others in the future.
- Specific constructive suggestions that focus on your learning are far more useful than general critiques. It is most helpful to provide feedback that helps instructors understand how their instructional choices facilitated or hindered your learning. Both positive and negative feedback is most helpful when very specific.
- Be respectful. Comments that are not related to your learning diminish the value of your feedback. For example, it is not helpful to comment upon an instructor’s appearance or to include personal insults in your feedback.
Results
Students may view select quantitative data from the evaluations of courses prior to each elective course enrolment period (specific dates to be announced) by logging into Quercus.
Questions?
If you are experiencing technical difficulties during the evaluation period, please contact the central course evaluation team: course.evaluations@utoronto.ca.
General questions about the process may be sent to the Registrar’s Office.