Frequently Asked Questions
This FAQ is divided into several categories. Please select a category and question.
Completing My Ratings
Accessing Student Ratings Results
Releasing My Name to My Instructor
Other Questions
- Amount Learned - "I learned a great deal in this course.".
- Materials & Activities - "Course materials and learning activities were effective in helping students learn. "
- Intellectual Skills Developed - "This course helped me develop intellectual skills (such as critical thinking, analytical reasoning, integration of knowledge)."
- Interest in Student Learning - "The instructor showed genuine interest in students and their learning."
Student access to rating results is one of a number of campus-wide efforts to help support and emphasize student learning at BYU. The "four learning items" are the items on the student rating form that most directly address student learning in a course. Student access to results of these items is intended to help students and faculty focus more on the effectiveness of instruction in helping students learn.
If you complete ratings for all your classes this semester, you can view results as soon as grades are posted. The URL for viewing ratings is: Student Access to Ratings Results.
Yes. As a student, you need to complete student ratings for all classes in which you are enrolled each semester in order to access student ratings results for the following semester.
- If a student is not enrolled for either Spring or Summer classes, whether they completed their student ratings the previous Winter semester will determine their access to student ratings results for the coming Fall semester.
- If students are enrolled for classes either Spring or Summer terms or for both Spring and Summer terms, they need to complete rating forms for all the courses in which they were enrolled in order to have access to rating results Fall semester.
- If students complete their ratings for Winter semester, they will have access to the rating results during both Spring and Summer terms.
- If a student is not enrolled at BYU during one semester, they will have access to the rating results if all rating forms were completed the last semester they were enrolled.
- All new students (e.g., freshmen and transfer students) will have access to the rating results during the first semester they are enrolled at BYU.
- If a continuing student has not enrolled at BYU for at least two semesters, they will be treated as a new student for rating access purposes (i.e., they will automatically have access to rating results the first semester they return).
Student ratings are available for professors who are teaching currently or in the coming semester. If a professor has taught in the past, but will not be teaching the next semester, that professor's ratings will not be available.
Student ratings are collected, analyzed, and reported each semester. Student ratings are made available to deans, department chairs, professors, and now students the day grades are posted for that semester. Students will have access to student ratings for the last four iterations of a particular class.
Yes. Your name will never be associated with any information you submit, unless you specifically put your
name in the comments. When reports are released, your name will not be displayed. Additionally, we only report
summary data (averages, standard deviations, and counts) to faculty and administrators. We never report the responses
of one particular student. You can view this sample report to see what
gets reported to faculty and administrators.
Ratings are usually available 3 weeks (semester) or 2 weeks (term) before the first day of finals. Please see the
ratings schedule for full details.
- Go to studentratings.byu.edu.
- Click on Submit your ratings.
- From the list of courses, click on the corresponding Rate Course button.
- Answer the survey questions
- Click the Submit Rating button at the bottom of the survey.
Yes and no. Please answer as many questions as you can. However, if you feel a question does not apply, you may
leave it blank.
Please check the ratings schedule to make it is time to rate your course.
If the course is still not listed, your course will not be rated.
But some of my classmates have been able to complete the ratings.
Unfortunately, the information we receive from Registration is not as precise as we would like. If this is the case,
we don't have a practical way to update the information in the Student Ratings System. Sorry.
Some First Block courses are actually listed as semester courses in Registration. Please check back towards the end
of the semester to see if the course will be rated then.
I'm sorry, but you cannot change or modify any rating after it has been submitted.
Sorry, you can't. Once the data is submitted it cannot be changed.
I'm sorry, but we don't allow ANY ratings to be submitted after the ratings period is over. No exceptions.
Some instructors offer extra credit as an incentive to students. If one or more of your instructors is providing
extra credit for completing your ratings you will need to release your name in this system in order to receive the
extra points.
After you have completed the rating for a course, a checkbox will appear on the course list allowing you
to release your name. You can change your mind as many times as you wish up until the end of the ratings period.
It is not necessary to provide your name in the comments. Faculty will receive your comments after
your grade is assigned.
No. Your name will only be shown if there are more than 5 people in the section that have completed the ratings.
Additionally, the names will not be shown after the grades submission deadline.
The data collected through this system is used by course authors to improve the course. Additionally, information
collected about instructors is used to determine faculty rank and status.
Research at BYU and other institutions has shown that a student's perceived performance on the final examination can
negatively influence the data. In order to avoid this bias, we don't allow ratings to be submitted after finals.
In simpler terms, we don't want the 2 most frustrating hours of the course to influence 4 months of teaching and
class involvement.
But the final exam is an important part of my class. I would like to offer my opinion on it.
Most of the questions in the Student Ratings survey relate to teaching and learning, not the testing experience.
You can still offer quality feedback on most if not all of the questions without taking the final exam. The
University also has resources and systems which can analyze test data and provide high-quality feedback
to the instructor about student and test performance.
Allowing students to change the data they have provided affects the quality of the data collected. In order to make
sure faculty and administrators receive accurate feedback, we don't allow any data to be changed after it has been
submitted.
Yes, we know who submitted the data. In fact, if you so desire, we can tell your instructor you completed the rating.
However, your name will never be associated with any information you submit, unless you specifically put your
name in the comments. When reports are released, your name will not be displayed. Additionally, we only report
summary data (averages, standard deviations, and counts) to faculty and administrators. We never report the responses
of one particular student. You can view this sample report to see what
gets reported to faculty and administrators.
It is true in very, very small courses (3 students or less). But unless there is only one student in the class, the instructor
will have to figure it out by guessing. All data collected is reported statistically in averages for the entire section
and how many students marked each response. All comments for the section are grouped together and are displayed in random
order. Even if you specified your name in the comments, the instructor would only know what you wrote in the comments.
They would not be able to figure out your responses to the other questions. See the sample report
and see if you can figure out what a particular student answered. You never know, one of those responses may be yours!
We've heard that too! However, we haven't found any evidence and nobody has proved it. We have investigated each
compromise report we have received only to find vague responses and incorrect assumptions. For example, the most credible
report we received went something like this:
The comments a student wrote in a class assignment were similar to the comments he/she later wrote in the student rating.
A few days after
completing the rating, the instructor approached the student about the student's concerns. When the student saw the
instructor directly address the student's concern, the student assumed the confidentiality of his/her rating was
compromised. After speaking with the instructor, the instructor confirmed he/she knew about the student's concern
because the student had written the comment in a class assignment for the instructor to read. In this case, the student
provided comments directly to the instructor and through the ratings system. When the instructor followed up
with the student, the student quickly assumed the ratings data had been compromised, forgetting that he/she
had already provided that same comment directly to the instructor in a previous occasion.