Faculty can create and submit custom questions to be added to their summer course evaluation. Here are some guidelines to help you craft the types of questions that will result in useful feedback.
Harvard Summer School evaluations are administered through Blue (as of 2019) and are accessible online. Instructors can access evaluations for courses offered in 2019 and beyond by going to harvard.bluera.com/harvard and logging in with their HarvardKey. View this sample questionnaire to see the questions that students will already be asked as part of the Blue course evaluation.
Tips for Creating Questions
Below are some examples of scaled and open-ended questions. When designing questions, you may want to keep a few tips in mind:
- Simple, straightforward questions are easier for students to respond to, and the responses are generally easier for you to interpret.
- Questions that focus on students’ individual perspectives, rather than their perception of the whole class, tend to yield more accurate, specific responses (e.g., “the instructor presented information at an appropriate pace” is vague, relative to “the instructor presented information that I could follow”).
- If there is a TA assigned to your course, she/he will also be evaluated. You do not need to add questions about your TA’s performance.
- Try to avoid duplicating the generic questions on the evaluation form. For an example of evaluation questions, see the Evaluation Form Sample.