We may be able to provide access to evaluation results for those who have faculty oversight responsibilities, or who assist those with oversight responsibility. For example, department chairs, program directors, college deans and their respective administrative assistants may request access to view evaluations for courses they oversee. Access is limited to courses for which their oversight extends and requires approval from the chair or dean. 

To request access, we need to know the following information:

1. Approximately how long you will need access.

2. Are you replacing someone who previously had this access? If so, please include their name so we can remove their access.

3. Describe the set of courses to which you need access. Be as specific as possible. Here are a few examples: 

   1. All classes in the XYZ department

   2. All undergraduate courses with the CARM prefix

Please fill out this administrative access request form: Request Administrative Access to Blue.

Account access requests should have approval from the department chair, dean, or immediate manager. If access is requested for courses managed in a different department or college, we will also need approval from that chair or dean.

Boise State Policy 4290, Annual Faculty Performance Evaluation, requires that student course evaluations be among the evidence of teaching quality provided for annual performance evaluations.  Policy 4340, Faculty Tenure and Promotion Guidelines requires teaching evaluations for promossion and tenure decisions. However, departments and colleges place different amounts of weight on course evaluations in personnel decisions. Also, note that faculty positions include research and service responsibilities in addition to teaching. To understand how course evaluations are incorporated into personnel reviews in your area, please contact your department chair or dean.  

Policy 4220 regarding adjunct faculty is not specific about the criteria and methods for reviewing re-hiring decisions. Please discuss with your department chair. 

There are two categories of questions: standard and instructor-added. Standard questions are determined by academic programs and applied consistently from semester to semester. Most colleges or departments have their standard questions applied across the board to their classes. There might be standard questions applied to all sections of a course or set of courses. In addition to college or department standard question sets, some standard question sets are applied to classes that share a certain class characteristic. All online, honors, and service learning classes receive special question sets developed by those offices.  

To change standard questions, whoever manages the course and its questions should submit a help desk ticket. Changes need to be finalized in the prior semester. Institutional Research will work with you to develop reliable questions that effectively address teaching and learning issues relevant to your program.

Instructor-added questions are owned by the instructor and are applied to a specific class. These are often used to obtain feedback on a particularly difficult part of the class or on a novel teaching approach being tried out. The instructor may change these at any time during the semester they will be used up to the start of the course evaluation period. 

Your class may have a problem with the instructors listed. Perhaps an extra co-instructor is included (or excluded) or the incorrect instructor is listed. Course evaluations usually should list only the primary instructor or instructors as listed in PeopleSoft. Secondary instructors—those who have assistance, supervisory, or coordination responsibility—are not listed as course instructors for evaluation purposes.

If you or a co-instructor has direct instruction responsibility for a course and is not listed for the evaluation, please contact helpdesk@boisestate.edu immediately. It is vital that problems with instructor listings be addressed in PeopleSoft. If you are not the course instructor but need access to course results as part your oversight responsibility, please submit a help desk ticket.

A second common problem occurs with lab instructors. In some classes, lab instructors are not scheduled for specific sections until after the class starts. We have an alternative way to address these lab situations, so please submit a help desk ticket if you encounter difficulties with lab instructor assignments.

Courses can be excluded from evaluation at the request of the department if courses fall into one of the following categories:

1. Courses evaluated by external (non-Boise State) entities are excluded.

2. Dissertation and thesis courses are excluded because they are composed of a single student, and anonymity cannot be protected.

3. Independent study, practicum, and research type courses are sometimes excluded because they are not instructor-led courses. In some cases they are included where more appropriate questions were developed, as is the case for internship courses.  

See here for list of courses excluded from evaluation by the Office of the Provost.

If you have questions about why a course was excluded or not excluded, please contact submit a help desk ticket. Submit a help desk ticket if you wan to request that a course or set of courses be routinely excluded or included in evaluations. Requests to change course exclusions should be approved by the chair of the department that owns the course.