A university question set was developed by a cross-disciplinary group of faculty with facilitation from the Center for Teaching and Learning. This is a core of 6 widely applicable and well-formed questions–4 multiple choice and 2 open-ended.

Roughly 70% to 80% of the question sets are based on the College, Department, or Subject of a course. Likewise, those units make the decisions on the bulk of the questions to ask. Departments or Subject groups may decide to include additional question sets, or not. Some have used other characteristics such as Type (lab, lec, sem, etc.), Course Number, or Level (eg. all 400 level numbers, or all GRAD vs UGRD) to define question sets.

There are other question sets that cut across College/Dept/Subject. The main ones are Online, Honors, Service Learning, and Summer. In other words, all Online courses automatically receive a set of questions from extended studies about the online nature of the course; any classes marked as honors sections receive a set of Honors questions; Service Learning sections get SL questions; Summer courses include some Summer term questions.

All instructors are able to create extra questions of their own to ask of a single class or many of their classes. Many instructors use this to ask pedagogical or outcome-specific questions. Instructors are notified that they can add their own questions approximately 1-2 weeks before the evaluation begins.

Any question set may be identified as an “Instructor” set. Thus, if there are three co-instructors, for example, there will be three “instructor” sets in the evaluation filled out by the student, with the appropriate instructor name added to those questions. Each instructor then only sees responses to their instructor set (plus all the non-instructor set questions)