Course Teaching Feedback

Assigning roles

• A course coordinator must be listed in Jac (course profile) as a 'course coordinator' to receive the results of the course feedback.
• A lecturer must be listed in Jac as a 'lecturer' OR in a 'LEC' within Syllabus+ (timetabling system) to receive a teaching survey.
• A tutor must be listed in Jac as a 'tutor' OR in a 'TUT' within Syllabus+ to receive a tutor survey.

Lecturers and tutors are eligble to receive a survey if they meet the 'Threshold Teaching Load' (defined in Section 8 of the Procedure).

To request exceptions or query the process, please contact evaluations@uq.edu.au.

Increasing response rate

Listen to how other UQ teaching staff improve their SECaT response rate

Listen to how other UQ teaching staff encourage constructive student feedback

To encourage student participation in surveys:​

• Advance Notice: Inform students about upcoming online evaluations and encourage them to check their student email accounts and the 'Have Your Say' module on Learn.UQ (Blackboard) during the evaluation period.​

• Purpose Communication: Explain the significance of evaluations and their role in enhancing teaching quality. Utilise promotional materials, such as the slide with the QR code.

• Class Time Allocation: Allocate class time for students to complete evaluations using their own devices. This approach has been associated with higher response rates.

Staff will receive an email with their course teaching feedback reports on the Monday following the official release date of final grades each semester, as specified in the UQ academic calendar. Before reviewing these reports, consider consulting the SECaT Reading Tips for guidance on interpretation.​

To maintain confidentiality, evaluation reports are only distributed when a survey meets the reportable data threshold of five or more responses. Quantitative results of all course evaluations from 2015 to the current semester are available for staff and students. Results can also be accessed via UQ Reportal. To request access, submit an online form. Links to various reports available for download from UQ Reportal are provided on the course and teaching reports webpage.

The process for redacting or removing student comments is outlined in Paragraph 37 to 38 of the Procedure. 

To manage this process more efficiently, we recommend such a request with the approval from Pro Vice Chancellor, Education and Student Experience to be submitted to Student Surveys and Evaluations Team (SSET) by the dates outlined in the table below.  

Requests to redact or remove a comment after the scheduled timeline, may be managed by exception, in consultation with ITaLI Director. 

The University will ensure that all data is collected and managed in accordance with University policies and relevant privacy laws, including the Information Privacy Act 2009 (QLD).

UQ is not to provide information that will identify a student who responds to the SECaT or SETutor survey unless required elsewhere in the Procedure or by law.

Students are requested not to self-identify and student identities remain confidential and are not released to teaching staff. However, if the student does self-identify, teaching staff are not to contact individual students about their responses to SECaT and/or SETutor surveys.

The identity of students remains confidential within SSET. Student identities are not disclosed to individual staff.

Refer to the Procedure for more details.

Q1.  Can a course be evaluated if its Course Profile is unpublished or retired? 

No. The Course Profile must be published in Jac using the Publish tile. If a Course Profile is unpublished or retired, surveys will not be generated for the course, even if it meets the minimum enrolment threshold (5 or more students). 

Q2.  My course has too many tutors to be added intoJac, is there another way to add tutors to receive a tutor survey?

Yes. If your school assigns tutors at the tutorial activity level (TUT) in the current timetabling system, Syllabus Plus (S+), they will be automatically linked to the course in the evaluation platform. Continue managing tutor details in S+ as usual. 

Q3. Can the new system evaluate courses that are not delivered in a standard 13-week semester?  

Yes, the new system can evaluate courses delivered in non-standard teaching periods (intensives, weekend, summer, etc.). 

By default courses with non-standarded teaching periods will be surveyed during the standard survey period. To request changes to the timing of your survey, please contact the Student Surveys and Evaluations Team at evaluations@uq.edu.au with your request. 

Q4. Can a course be evaluated if it has fewer than 5 students enrolled? 

No. A minimum of five enrolled students is required for a survey to be generated. If your course has fewer than five students enrolled, we recommend using one of the informal feedback tools to collect feedback from your students. Review the Informal student feedback page for further information and guidelines.

Q5. Can staff request their course to be exempt from evaluations? 

Courses to be exempted must be approved by the Associate Dean (Academic). To exempt a course, please submit, with ADA approval, a request to the Student Surveys and Evaluations Team at evaluations@uq.edu.au. 

Thesis, dissertation and other one-on-one supervision based courses will be exempted from course teaching feedback. 

Q6. I coordinate/teach “multi-badge” courses with UG and PG cohorts. Can I merge these two courses’ survey together?  

Multi-badge courses are manually linked in Learn.UQ. From Si-Net, Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate (PG) cohorts are enrolled in two different courses (by course code). For this reason, these two independent courses cannot be merged.  

When you receive the survey open notification, please login to Subject Management and access/download QR codes for UG and PG, respectively.  

Please ensure that you are listed as a Course Coordinator (or Lecturer) in both Course Profiles (Jac), so UG and PG cohorts can provide feedback to the correct staff.  

Q7. What types of report do I have access in the evaluation system?  

The types of reports staff can access in the evaluation system is subject to the staff member’s role in a course. Please refer to the Table below for details. 

Q8. Why “Threshold Status” shows “Met” but my teaching/tutor reports display a message as “this survey did not meet the threshold of 5 responses”?

When a course survey receives 5 responses, “Threshold Status” will display “Met” in course report, as well as related teaching and tutor reports.

The message “this survey did not meet the threshold of 5 responses” indicates that your individual teaching/tutor survey received fewer than 5 responses, and no results can be generated to display. The number of responses is displayed as “Responses Received” on the upper right corner of the cover page.