Access to SIRS

As a department chair, you can decide who within your office will have access to SIRS and at what level of access by writing to us at otear@rutgers.edu . Since some of the data is covered by FERPA, we need approval from a department chair to add access for anyone – a quick email to otear@rutgers.edu confirming the change is all we need.

OTEAR is not regularly notified about changes in department administration, so please keep us informed when your department administration or personnel changes.

Survey Set-up (“DIG”)

Every department must assign one or more “DIG” administrators who are responsible for survey set-up (verifying instructors, changing dates as needed, etc.). Usually this is an administrative assistant. The DIG process takes place in the first 2 months of the Fall and Spring semesters. Departments can choose the appropriate individual(s) to complete this process.

Blue Dashboard for SIRS Results

The Blue Dashboard is available by request and allows units to look longitudinally across their SIRS data. While not a substitute for an official teaching grid, the Blue Dashboard provides an opportunity for analysis of trends across courses to determine strengths and areas for improvement. It also provides an opportunity to compare courses based on different demographics or course characteristics, such as differences between in-person and online courses.  

Want access? Just sign up for our once-a-semester training (SIRS admins get the info automatically) or email otear@rutgers.edu.

Customization of the SIRS Forms

The Blue system that runs the course surveys offers a good deal of flexibility, and our goal is to ensure SIRS provides your department or school with actionable data for continuous improvement of your courses and programs. To that end, there are options for customizing the surveys depending on the types of changes requested. In August of each year, we offer a “Customization of SIRS for Actionable Data” presentation. The recording for the previous year is available on the Improving the Evaluation of Teaching Canvas site (log into Canvas with your NetID to access).

School Forms

Schools have the option of deleting and/or adding questions to the standard SIRS form, although the teaching effectiveness and overall course quality questions must be retained. Please reach out to otear@rutgers.edu to discuss options and resources.

Department Questions

Departments have the option of adding additional questions to SIRS, either permanently or on a semester-by-semester basis. You can view a list of current department questions with additional instructions, as well as information about how to add temporary questions to surveys for a single semester. To add permanent department questions, contact us at otear@rutgers.edu to discuss the details and options.

Instructors also have the ability to add questions to their own surveys, in addition to any school or department questions.

Teaching Evaluation

Rutgers continues to move toward a more holistic evaluation of teaching, where student perceptions (SIRS) are not the only indicators of teaching effectiveness as presented in the Guidelines for the Evaluation of Effective Teaching. OTEAR has a variety of offerings and resources to support peer review observations and teaching portfolios that are targeted to faculty and department chairs.

OTEAR can also support departments in creating departmental plans for teaching evaluation to provide transparency for faculty and incoming administrators on how the department evaluates teaching effectiveness.

Interpretation of SIRS

OTEAR runs an “Interpreting SIRS and other Forms of Student Feedback” workshop once each Spring and Fall semester. This workshop is especially beneficial for those who regularly engage with SIRS, but we also encourage anyone from the university community interested in learning about best practices in interpreting student feedback to join us. Materials and a past recording can be found on the Improving the Evaluation of Teaching Canvas site. To receive notifications about upcoming workshops and presentations, please sign up for the OTEAR email listserv.