Spring 2009 Online Subject Evaluation Fact Sheet for Instructors
Over the next few years, MIT will be moving its central subject evaluation system online and
away from paper-based forms. The online system has been developed and was first pilot-tested in
Spring 2008 with 22 subjects in 4 departments. In Fall 2008, 55 subjects in 9 departments were
evaluated online. In Spring 2009, our pilot is projected to grow to over 200 subjects in 16
departments. The Institute paper-based evaluation system is scheduled be phased out by Fall
semester of the 2010-11 academic year.
The move from paper-based to online subject evaluation is a multi-year joint project of the Office
of the Dean for Undergraduate Education and Information Services and Technology. For
more details, visit the project web page, web.mit.edu/se-project.
When?
Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 9:00am: Evaluation window opens for students.
Monday, May 18, 2009, 9:00am: Evaluation window closes for students.
mid-June, 2009: Summary results available to department administrators, instructors, and the
MIT community.
Where?
The home page for taking evaluations and viewing results is web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation. If
you have problems logging in, viewing evaluations or results, or need any other technical
assistance, contact se-help@mit.edu.
Why?
Evaluation reports are used by instructors, departments, and students. Instructors use the feedback
to identify where they can improve the curriculum and their teaching. Most departments consider
evaluation results when reviewing instructors for reappointment, raises, promotion, and tenure.
Students use evaluations to help them choose subjects and instructors.
Moving evaluations online will allow instructors to:
 Submit their own questions.
 Spend class time teaching, rather than administering the evaluation.
 Get feedback from all students, not just the ones who show up on the last day of class.
 Get richer open-ended comments from students.
 Receive customized electronic reports, including open-ended comments, quickly.
Getting Evaluated
In the pilot phase, you will be recruited by your department headquarters to participate. In order
to participate, you need to have both a Kerberos ID and a browser that has MIT certificates
installed. If you don’t have a Kerberos ID, speak to your department administrator. If you have a
Kerberos ID but need certificates, you can download them from web.mit.edu/certificates.
Managing Evaluation Questions
For the Spring 2009 pilot, departments will continue to use the questions from the HASS and
Science/Engineering paper evaluation forms. You can view these forms on the paper-based
evaluation results site: https://web.mit.edu/acadinfo/sse/samples.html
In the online system, you now have the option to add specific questions about instructors and/or
sections, as well as the subject; the questions can be in any format — open-ended, scalar,
-1-
Spring 2009 Online Subject Evaluation Fact Sheet for Instructors
numeric, etc. If you would like to add extra questions to the online survey, please speak with your
department subject evaluation administrator. The deadline to submit extra questions is April
16.
Evaluation Period
Subject evaluations are kept open between Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 9am and Monday, May 18,
2009 at 9am, when final exams begin. Students may evaluate subjects at any time during the
evaluation period.
Response Rates
Evaluation reminders will be sent via e-mail to students who haven’t completed evaluations and
will contain an HTTP link to the survey engine.
Response rates for evaluations will be sent to departments and instructors during the evaluation
window. You can help boost response rates by emphasizing to your students how important the
evaluations are to you and your department, and by letting them know that they can view the
quantitative results online at web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation/results.html. Some instructors have
found that asking students to bring their laptops to class to take the evaluation yields very high
response rates.
Viewing Results
Detailed summary evaluation reports for Spring 2009 subjects are projected to be available in
mid-June; you will get an email when they are ready. The public web-based summary results will
be available to students and others in the MIT community on
http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation/results.html at the same time. As with the web-based reports
in the paper-based evaluation system, no open-ended comments will be displayed in the public
version.
Getting Help
If you have problems logging in, viewing results, or need any other technical assistance, contact
se-help@mit.edu. General comments and questions about this project can be directed to the
project team, se-wtw@mit.edu.
-2-