SIRS Information for Administrators
Verifying Course Information in DIG
OTEAR uses a survey tool hosted by eXplorance Blue, which works in two phases. In the “setup” phase, department administrators review and optionally alter survey information in DIG (Data Integrity Gateway), then “publish” the courses when done. Once published, DIG feeds this information directly into Blue where the Facutly and Student phase of the survey process begins.
Please refer to our procedures and dates for information about deadlines and the SIRS process.
Instructions for Editing Course Surveys in DIG
To access your course list in DIG, use the link sent to you in email, or go to the Blue survey system home page and use the search box to search for “DIG”. If you have more than one DIG task, click “View all tasks” to see the full list and select the appropriate one.
Click below for more instructions.
The following instructions explain how to edit a single course’s information in DIG. Please note that several departments have specific survey forms with additional questions.
Editing Survey Settings
Removing or Adding Instructors
You can also filter and edit information for multiple courses at once. For example, to change the survey dates for all 200 level courses, start by using the “Advanced Filters” to narrow the course list to the ones you want to edit. Once you’ve filtered the list, use the “Bulk Actions” feature to apply the survey date changes to the selected courses.
Normally surveys are created for each instructor based on the course section, but there are times when the section does not accurately reflect the teaching environment or is too limited to address the type of student feedback needed. Splitting and merging are two similar techniques that allow the surveys to operate differently, but should be used with caution.
- Spltting and Merging terminates the daily roster update: subsequent changes to the student roster will no longer be reflected in the survey after the split or merge.
- Splitting and Merging are permanent: they cannot be undone or modified after the survey starts.
- Merging can break the reporting relationships and comparative mean calculations. Reports may need to be manually re-assigned before they are visible.
Splitting
When you need to have different survey settings for different instructors or two surveys for the same instructor, you can “split” the section into multiple surveys. Keep in mind that multiple instructors are automatically handled by the system, and should not normally be split. Only split the survey if the survey dates or other settings must be changed independently.
Merging
Merging allows you to combine the surveys for two distinct course sections into one survey. DO NOT merge crosslisted or lecture sections! — These are automatically combined when creating the reports. Merging should be avoided if possible, and only used for courses that are not linked in CSS. Please contact OTEAR to discuss whether your circumstances require merging. Most often, merging is used to combine independent studies into a larger group for the purpose of the survey.
To complete the survey setup, all course must be published by the deadline (refer to the schedule for the current semester). Publishing finalizes the survey details and begins the countdown to the survey process. For course sections that do not need surveys, you should publish with “SIRS Needed” set to “N” – this tells the system that the survey is not needed, and confirms that the choice was reviewed and approved.
- Optionally perform search to find just the course that you want to publish. You can skip this step if you want to publish everything.
- At the very top of your course list, place a checkmark in the “Bulk Actions” box, this will select all the surveys on your current list.
- Click “Bulk Actions” and choose “Publish courses” from the drop-down menu.
- Review the information on the confirmation screen, and click “Yes, I’m sure” in the lower right corner.
You may see warnings that incomplete courses cannot be published – you can continue through the process and DIG will skip those courses while publishing everything else. Afterwards, use the Advanced search filters to find the “Invalid” courses, correct any errors, then publish again.
You will also get a warning if you attempt to publish a course that is already published, you can safely ignore this message since these courses are already complete.