Faculty Evaluations: Student Rating of Teaching Success (Student perspective)

At RIT, we are committed to providing our students with a high quality education. The evaluation of teaching effectiveness is a critical part of that commitment. Each semester, during weeks 13 through 15, you will be invited to complete a short 10-minute teaching effectiveness survey for each course in which you are registered. Success of the teaching evaluation process depends on your participation and on the quality of the answers that you provide. We encourage you to take the time to provide your faculty with thoughtful answers.

SmartEvals is an online-only system. Paper forms are not available at RIT.

SmartEvals consists of three main parts:

  1. Initial communication. At the beginning of the 13th week, you will receive a customized email from SmartEvals alerting you that your course surveys are open for responses. This email will include a link to RIT’s SmartEvals page plus a reference to each of the courses in which you are registered at the time that the surveys of teaching effectiveness process starts.
  2. Reminders. As you complete your course surveys, SmartEvals will take note and, during the following three weeks you may receive a reminder that one or more of your courses may still need their surveys completed. These reminders are not sent frequently and will only remind you of those courses whose surveys you have not completed. After you complete all your surveys, SmartEvals will not send you reminders anymore.
  3. Final reminders. About three days before the surveys close, students who have not completed all their course surveys will get a final reminder. After the survey completion period concludes, students will no longer be able to access their course surveys.

Access SmartEvals

FAQs

SmartEvals is the official student rating of teaching effectiveness for annual performance reviews and tenure and promotion processes. It is an online-only system.

Absolutely. RIT’s SmartEvals webpage can be accessed from a variety of web-ready smart phones and tablets.

Each survey consists of at most 20 questions, most of which ask you to select an answer from up to five available options, and at least two open-ended, free text questions. SmartEvals has advised us that surveys of this length and characteristics should require no more than 10 minutes to complete each.

Sometime before at the beginning of week 13 of each semester, you will get a customized email from SmartEvals alerting you that student rating for courses you are registered for in that term are open for your input. The email will include a link to a customized RIT SmartEvals page which, when you click on it, will prompt you for your RIT email and your RIT password.

No. RIT is providing SmartEvals with authentication services in a way that, when you login to RIT’s SmartEvals page, it is RIT – not the vendor— that authenticates you as an RIT student.

Absolutely. SmartEvals is a system contracted by RIT to manage RIT’s evaluation of teaching effectiveness. At no time will survey results be shared with RIT instructors in ways that specific survey responders can be uniquely identified.

However, course surveys are likely to include open-ended free-text questions whose responses instructors will be able to see in their entirety. Therefore, students are advised not to enter information that could be used to identify them.
 

Faculty will be able to see the results of their SmartEvals two days after final grades have been posted.

Instructors will be able to see summative information about each of their courses in a form that will allow them to understand how effective their teaching was in each of their courses. SmartEvals does not provide instructors with an option to identify individual responders.

However, course surveys are likely to include free-text, open-ended questions whose responses instructors will be able to see in their entirety. Therefore, students are advised not to enter information that could be used to identify them.
 

Yes. But you must first complete all your SRATE surveys before you are allowed to edit any of them. Assuming that you completed all your surveys, login to your SmartEvals page, select the course whose SRATE survey you want to re-submit, and click on the “Retake Evaluation” button.

SmartEvals is not the preferred method for providing feedback about faculty behaviors related to gender based harassment or discrimination. Any sexual harassment, gender based discrimination, sexual misconduct or sexual violence that you would like to report anonymously should be reported through RIT’s Title IX office. If you would like to file a complaint identifying yourself, you can do so through the online Title IX report form.