Online SIRS Details

Also see the Frequently Asked Questions about the online SIRS.
List of Online Surveys for the Current Semester

Spring 2013

• February 25, 2013: OTEAR sends list of course surveys to departments for review and corrections.
• March 15: Deadline for departments to return to OTEAR the corrected list of courses that will use the online surveys. For surveys that should run earlier in the semester, please notify us at least two weeks before the survey should begin.
• April 1: OTEAR emails faculty and instructors, listing all of their courses that will use online surveys.
• April 15: Last day for faculty to request changes to their surveys.
• April 22 (12:01 A.M.) Survey starts, students are notified by email. (Faculty may choose alternate survey dates)
  • April 25, April 28, May 1, May 4, May 7: Students who have not responded receive email reminders (dates may vary)
• May 8 (11:59 P.M.) Survey ends
• May 17 : All final grades due to the registrar
• May 20 - 31, 2013 - : Faculty and instructors receive survey results by email, departments receive results for all surveys through a Sakai drop box.

Information for Students

• Students can take the survey by logging in to Sakai and clicking "All Surveys" (on the "My Workspace" tab) or go directly to the Survey Dashboard - https://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal/site/sirs.
• Privacy policy
• Changing the email address used by the system (change the "Display Address" after logging in)
• All students registered in any class, including non-Rutgers students in Summer and Winter Session, can activate a NetID at any time to complete the survey.
• Students receive an e-mail notification that a survey is available with up to three reminders prior to the closing date, provided their listed address is correct. Reminders stop when the student completes the survey.
• Students receive a separate e-mail for every instructor and TA in each course in which they are enrolled. We realize that this is undesirable; at some point in the future students will only receive one e-mail that combines all their courses, however we have no set date when this software update will be ready to use.

Survey Results Report Distribution

• Survey results are emailed directly to instructors after the registrar closes the grading period for the term.
• Distribution to departments is through two methods:
  • Temporary Sakai dropboxes (statistics plus student comments)
  • Permanent SIRS Archive (statistics only).
• Students can view SIRS summary reports (without student comments) for previous semesters at the Student Instructional Rating Survey Results web site (results are posted to the web site a few weeks after distribution to departments, when the full collection of online and paper surveys is complete).
• Summary data for online surveys is calculated separately from the paper surveys, and the results differentiated in all reports generated by OTEAR. Differences in the survey methodology should be considered by departments when they use survey data.
• The reports distributed to faculty, instructors, and departments include the anonymous, collated comments. It is the responsibility of the instructors and departments to file a copy of the comments for future reference, as per the Senate Resolution on Best Practices in the Assessment of Teaching. OTEAR deletes student comments after distribution, only keeping a permanent record of the summary statistics.
• Distribution methods may change in the future as we further integrate the survey system with the Schedule of Classes and other course data systems.

Courses Surveyed

• The Student Instructional Rating Survey is designed so that one survey will be used for each instructor and TA. The instructor in a lecture class with recitation periods should be surveyed in one survey representing the lecture hall. Separate surveys will be created for each recitation or lab section, so that the recitation instructors can be surveyed in each of their own sections.
• Team-taught courses: If a course is taught by a team of faculty members, then a separate survey will be created for each member of the team. For example, if a course has three faculty members teaching as a team, then three surveys will be created, one for each instructor. All three surveys will be sent to the entire class. If notified early enough, we can run the surveys at any point during the semester. Please notify the OTEAR if you have any team-taught courses or if you would like to stagger the survey dates, and include the names of instructors who have not received a notice of an online survey.
• All Summer courses use the online survey system.
• All courses on the Newark campus use the online survey system. University-wide, 85% of courses use the online system.
• For Spring 2013, any department or school that would like to move their courses online may do so. Contact us prior to March 15 at 732-932-7466 or info@brokenemail.rutgers.edu please replace "brokenemail" with ctaar.rutgers.edu to discuss the procedures.
• If your department wants to use the online system for all courses, you can fill out our online survey request template (Excel file) and email it to before the date indicated in the schedule above. However if you contact us first, we can prefill the template with your department courses and you will only need to make minor corrections and fill in the gaps.
• Instructors are notified by email two weeks prior to the start of the survey and given an opportunity to correct the survey details.
• Departments that have chosen not to list the instructors in the Schedule of Classes or run courses on a varied course schedule, and have not informed OTEAR of accurate instructor or course information may find that some of their surveys are incorrect or missing. Please contact OTEAR at 732-932-7466 for assistance as soon as possible.