SIRS — The Student Instructional Ratings Survey
The Student Instructional Rating Survey (SIRS) is a University-wide survey of students for their comments about their experiences in the classroom. The results are used by the individual instructors, departments, schools and the University for the assessment and improvement of teaching. Faculty members are asked to provide summaries of the student survey statistics for personnel decisions such as tenure, promotion or merit-based pay.
The evaluation of an instructor's performance is an ongoing process that includes peer review, construction of a teaching portfolio, and an assessment of student learning outcomes in addition to student ratings. OTEAR tries to avoid calling SIRS “teaching evaluations” — "Rating survey" is a more accurate term for this one facet of the teaching evaluation process.
General Information
- Procedures and Deadlines
- University Senate Resolution on Best Practices in Assessment of Teaching (archived)
- Privacy Statement
- Full SIRS question list
- Sample SIRS form (PDF)
- Information for Faculty using Blue
- About Student Participation
- Online SIRS Frequently Asked Questions
- Adding Additional Questions
- List of Optional Questions
- Information for Department Administrators using Blue
- Levels of access to SIRS data
- Using additional Midcourse Surveys
- Department Administrators should use the SIRS Results Department Archive. The archive contains the full set of SIRS summary statistics from 1995 to the present, for all instructors.
- Faculty, instructors and administrators should go directly to the Blue survey system for the survey results including open-ended comments, from 2019 to the present.
Information for Faculty and Instructors
Information for Administrators
SIRS Results
View Summary Results
Open to the entire university community. Recent Spring and Fall courses only. Open-ended comments and surveys for TAs are not posted.