FAQs

Course feedback is the primary method on campus for faculty to hear from students about their course experience. Course feedback forms typically include questions that ask students to share their opinions about certain aspects of the course e.g., the syllabus or instructor feedback) using a survey scale (strongly disagree -> strongly agree), as well as questions that students you to comment further (e.g., what parts of the course were most valuable and what could be changed). Faculty may use student feedback to modify their course content, change their pedagogical approach, and inform their strategies for improving their courses. Academic departments and schools/colleges use course feedback data to determine course offerings and when instructors are being considered for tenure and/or promotion.

The feedback you provide remains confidential and no identifying information is recorded or distributed on the reports that are generated. Aggregate results of all student course feedback are available to instructors after grades have been submitted.

Your feedback is valued and used by departments and instructors. Your input is very important and directly impacts actions to update and enhance course instruction and environments.

We understand that you may be taking several courses which leads to a good amount of feedback to provide. Our goal is to receive your direct feedback for each course offered at Syracuse University so that we can work together to improve each individual learning environment as well as the entire campus collectively. Together we can make changes and improve the quality of life and the academic experience.

Syracuse University uses an online course feedback system which sends emails from Syracuse University Course Feedback. Completing feedback forms is easy to do.

On the day a survey becomes available for one of your courses, you will receive email notification that includes a table of information listing course names along with the survey open and close dates. There are multiple access points for students:

• Log in to coursefeedback.syr.edu with your Syracuse University credentials.
• Click on the link in invitation or reminder emails to login and view available feedback forms from your phone or computer
• In Blackboard, select "Tools" in the main menu and then click on the Course Feedback tile
• Scan the QR code found here

If you are having problems accessing forms, it may be a browser issue. The course feedback system requires the acceptance of a session cookie by the browser software. If you cannot view your forms, please check to see that cookies are enabled in the browser you are using. Allowing cookies is not the default setting in the most recent Safari version, so if you use Safari, please:

• Click on “Safari” in the main menu, then “Preferences” from the sub-menu.
• Click on the “Privacy” panel.
• If “Block all cookies” is selected, they should de-select it.

Another step is to clear the browser cache. This article shares how that can be done in different browsers.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-clear-your-browser-cache/

If the issue persists, please contact the IEA course feedback team.

You can go to http://coursefeedback.syr.edu to login at any time! You can also access course forms in Blackboard. Select "Tools" in the main menu and then click on the Course Feedback tile.

Syracuse University uses an online platform for collecting course feedback from students at the end of the academic term. Within the system, you have direct access to real-time response rates and results after the grade submission deadline for each of your courses. You can also compile results over time (e.g., multiple semesters) using the Report Builder functionality.

Instructors can access the course feedback system in the following ways:

1.  Go to coursefeedback.syr.edu and log in with your Syracuse University credentials.
2. In Blackboard, click "Tools" in the main menu and then select the "Course feedback" tile.

Course feedback opens towards the end of the course based on the course duration. For details about regular session and flex format courses visit our Important Dates page.

Course feedback forms are made up of blocks of questions that appear to students as one seamless survey. More details can be found on our Feedback Form Template page.

Many schools and colleges have enabled the feature for faculty to add up to five custom questions to each course from the item banks located in the course feedback system. A reference guide and video can be found on our Information for Instructors page.

You sure can! Go to the the Manage Courses widget from your system dashboard, then click the icon located under the “Preview” column next to your listed courses to view the entire form.

For regular session courses, reports become accessible 10-days after the University’s grade deadline for that semester. For flex format courses, reports become accessible 17-days after the survey ends.

If you need reports that were generated within the previous system, the first point of contact should be with your department to receive the reports.

Results generated by the course feedback system include mean score, standard deviation, frequency of each response, and median. Additionally, student responses to open-ended questions will be provided. For each course, you download the type of report you would like to see; options include detailed and short reports with or without the comments, as well as a raw data export in Excel.

When results become available, review both the forced-choice and open-ended responses to ascertain your teaching strengths and opportunities for improvement from the student perspective. Analyzing the information objectively can provide valuable insight into your teaching and be used to make positive changes in your course or teaching practices.

There is no selection process. All courses are included for feedback unless they fall within the list of exclusions outlined in our Policies an Practices web page. Courses are imported directly from Blackboard, and our office will contact you in the beginning of each semester to start the confirmation process within the course feedback system. Please refer to the Important Dates for detailed information.

At the beginning of the fall, spring, summer, and Winterlude sessions, courses are imported from Blackboard into the course feedback system and regularly synced throughout the academic term.

At the beginning of the academic term, you will see a new project within your Manage Courses widget in the course feedback system. We ask that you not make any adjustments to the listed information because many new courses are identified and imported into the system daily during the first two weeks of the academic term. Once we filter course lists and set survey start/end dates,  you will be notified that the course confirmation process is set to begin (approximately the first two weeks into the academic term). This process includes:

1. Confirming all courses are listed for your academic area (see course feedback policies and practices for types of courses that are excluded)
2. Confirming all instructors and teaching assistants are correct and that any additional names are removed
3. Letting us know what courses should be cross-listed or merged for reporting so that we can map them together and assign the appropriate forms