> Evaluating Your Course

SIRS is the Student Instructional Rating System. This process collects feedback from students in all courses and course levels in order to provide faculty and teaching units with an accurate response to their instructional practices and provide teaching units with one kind of information to be considered in deciding on retention, promotion, tenure, and salary. While the University provides to departments a common student rating instrument, many departments have created customized SIRS forms for their special needs. The standard or customized forms are distributed to students at the end of the semester, and students generally have responded using a computer scantron form or bubble sheet.

SOCT is the Student Opinion of Courses and Teaching. This is separate instrument used to collect feedback on a small set of questions for all undergraduate courses (except those taught by Teaching Assistants). The SOCT questions were developed to elicit the types of information students indicated were helpful in making informed judgments in selecting courses and faculty members in those courses. The aggregate results of this instrument are updated at least once yearly and are available to the MSU community online (www.soct.msu.edu). Like SIRS, SOCT responses have been collected using bubble sheets distributed in class.

The University is developing a process of collecting SIRS and SOCT student responses online through a secured connection. The system will only allow students to report results for courses in which they are enrolled and for which online SIRS/SOCT collection is activated. The system will only track that the student has or has not responded, ensuring that students only respond once per course for SIRS and SOCT. The actual responses, however, will not be linked to any individual identifier and will be kept entirely confidential. Students in the courses piloting the online version of SIRS and SOCT will have the opportunity to provide feedback on each of the instructors in any particular course through the standard set of questions, and to submit the constructive comments they have typically been asked to write on the back of the SIRS form. This pilot only changes the collection method; the questions are unchanged.