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, as well as their administrative assistants, may request access to view evaluations for courses they oversee. Access is specifically limited to courses for which their oversight extends, and requires approval from the chair or dean. 

In order to request access, we need to know the following information:

1. For how long do you need access?  Only this semester?  Or if a longer term, please let us know approximately how long you will need it.  

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

   3. Etc.

Please fill out this administrative access request form: Administrative Access to Blue (Help Desk Request Form)

Account access requests should have approval from the department chair, dean or immediate manager.   If access is requested to courses managed in a different department or college, we will also need approval from that chair or dean.  Thank you for your help.  We want to make sure that your, and your colleagues’, confidentiality is protected. 

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.  Similarly, Policy 4340, Faculty Tenure and Promotion Guidelines, likewise require teaching evaluations for P&T 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 see 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 chairperson. 

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. And there may 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 class(es) and its questions should  make a request to the HelpDesk.  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 wrong instructor is shown.  Course evaluations usually should list only the “Primary” instructor(s) as listed in PeopleSoft for the class evaluation.  “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 directly instructing the course, but need access to course results as part your oversight responsibility, please let us know.

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 let us know if you are having difficulties with lab instructor assignments.

Policy 4300 states, “The instruction of courses, including those taught by adjunct faculty and graduate assistants, will be evaluated by students in every section of every course, in every semester, and in summer.”  In all, well over 90% of all credit bearing classes are evaluated by Bronco CourseEval (BCE).   However, courses can be intentionally excluded, at the request of the department, if they fall into one of the following categories:

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

2. Dissertation and Thesis courses.  These are excluded because they are composed of a single student and anonymity could not 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, such as has been done for all Internship courses.  

See here for list of Courses excluded from evaluation by the Provost’s Office (Google Doc).

If you have questions about why a course was excluded, or why it was NOT excluded, please contact the HelpDesk and we will research the answer for you.  Similarly, contact us to request that a given course or set of courses be routinely excluded or included in the evaluations. Requests to change course exclusions should be approved by the chair of the department which owns the course.