The New Student Course Evaluations (beginning in Fall 2025)

Beginning in Fall 2025, the college will adopt a new set of Student Course Evaluations. This change resulted from a multi-year effort to develop student course evaluations designed to satisfy:

• Use end-of semester student course evaluations for formative and summative evaluation with an emphasis on formative use for reflection and enhancement of teaching practices.
• Encourage both full-time and adjunct faculty members to make changes to their teaching practice based on the results presented in student course evaluations.
• Consider student voice presented in course evaluations as significant but as only one point of measurement of a faculty member’s teaching performance.
• Foundational to the redesign should be the recognition of the research on inherent implicit bias in student course evaluations.
• Distinctions in the ratings for student course evaluations should be clarified by using a three-scale rating identical to that of the new Faculty Evaluation Process. (See below.)

Features of the New Student Course Evaluations

Teaching dimensions

In order to provide faculty with clearer information on how their students felt about different aspects of their teaching, faculty will be provided with individual ratings in each of the following “teaching dimensions”, based on student responses to particular sets of questions:

• Course Design and Organization

• Instructional Methods

• Assessment and Feedback

• Class Culture

• Student Learning

There are multiple opportunities for students to provide free-response comments relevant to each of these dimensions, in addition to some overall free-response questions at the end. In addition, there are unrated questions at the end to help faculty understand which different types of activities students believe are most helpful to them in their learning. (Sections 1-5 in the surveys, which cover the 5 teaching dimensions, are the sections that contribute to the Student Course Evaluation rating. Questions in sections 7 and 8 are not considered.)

5-point Likert Scale

The new course evaluation surveys use a revised 5 point Likert scale (recommended by OIRA) of: 

• 1 – Strongly disagree 

• 2 – Disagree

• 3 – Neither agree nor disagree

• 4 – Agree 

• 5 – Strongly agree 

• – N/A –

A New Rating Scale

New course evaluation ratings

The new course evaluation rating scale has been brought into alignment with the new faculty evaluation ratings; ratings for the revised student course evaluations will be determined as follows, based upon the above 5 point Likert scale:

For each section taught, the mean of all Likert scale questions will be determined and rounded to the nearest 0.1. The rating will be based on this mean:

• • If the mean is from 4.0 to 5.0, the rating will be ACC exemplary teaching and faculty expectations have been met

  • If the mean is from 3.0 to 3.9, the rating will be Approaching ACC exemplary teaching and faculty expectations

  • If the mean is less than 3.0, the rating will be Does not meet ACC faculty expectations

(If the software is unable to average all questions, the average of the means of the five teaching dimensions is an acceptable stand-in.)

After 2 years, data from the new student course evaluations will be examined by the Faculty Evaluation Steering Committee to determine if these ratings continue to meet the needs of the college and they will be reviewed on a regular schedule thereafter.

Low response rates

The Student Feedback and Faculty Reflection section of the new Annual Faculty Evaluation Summary Forms has a choice for  “Low Response – Interpret Ratings with Caution” for situations where there were too few student responses to consider the overall rating as fair to the faculty member:

For any class sections where the total number of student responses is less than 20% of the class enrollment or 3 responses, whichever is higher, only student comments and answers to individual questions will be considered in the Student Feedback and Faculty Reflection rating; the overall rating for that class section will not be considered.

Faculty Process to Monitor Response Rates and View Reports

Each semester, based on the Course Evaluation Calendar, faculty receive an email notification when the course evaluation starts; all student course evaluations will take place online. Students do not have access to the student course evaluations until the start of the evaluation period, late in the semester. During the evaluation window, faculty can monitor the response rates using the “Course Evaluation” panel in any of their Blackboard courses and encourage students to participate.

Twenty days after the course evaluation ends, faculty receive a system email with their course evaluation reports. They can also view/download the course evaluation reports using the “Course Evaluation” panel in any of their Blackboard courses. These reports will be available in the Blackboard panel for three semesters.

In addition, the ACC Course Evaluation System will also email faculty a copy of their course evaluation reports via their ACC Gmail account, with the subject line: “ACC Student Course Evaluation Results for [Semester]”.

See the ACC Course Evaluation web pages for more information.

Student Process to Participate

Based on the Course Evaluation Calendar, students receive a notification and a direct link to the online course evaluation via their ACC GMail account when the course evaluation starts. Students can also participate using the “Course Evaluation” panel in any of their Blackboard courses; the survey is not accessible to students until the beginning of the course evaluation window above.

See the ACC Course Evaluation web pages for more information.

Department Chair and Deans’ Process to View the Reports

The Office of Faculty Evaluation provides the following reports to Deans and Department Chairs in the ACC BOX portal 2-4 weeks into the new semester:

• • Individual Course Reports (PDF) (Sample)
  • Compilation Reports per course type and instructor (PDF). For example, this sample compilation report contains the summary of the same instructor from his/her two lecture courses (Sample)
  • A report of each course average (See sample Excel file, last column)
  • Grade Distribution Report
  • No Response Report

To view the reports, Deans and Department Chairs log in to the ACC BOX portal and navigate to their departmental folders. Visit this ACC BOX training resource site or view these Box video tutorials to learn more about BOX.Please contact the Faculty Evaluation Office if you have any questions.

See the ACC Course Evaluation web pages for more information.