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. All members of the University have access to the summary statistics from the student surveys at http://sirs.rutgers.edu. Results prior to 2001 that are not available online are archived at the Rutgers University Libraries.

University Senate Resolution on Best Practices in Assessment of Teaching

Transition to Online SIRS

Some changes are being put into place for the Student Instructional Ratings Survey (SIRS) for the 2010-2011 academic year. At present, over 80% of the sections of courses in the university use the online SIRS. This system has been very successful with the results distributed to the faculty and departments within days after the end of the term, while lowering costs for academic departments and for CTAAR.

Due to budget reductions, the paper system will still be available in Fall and Spring semesters only, with some significant changes:

Any department using paper forms for Fall should not expect their results until June. We will process the Fall and Spring paper forms at the same time, and distribute those results in June.
We ask all departments, whether using the online system or the paper system, to fill in instructor information in an Excel template and return it to us by the 7th week of the semester. We will email you the template at the start of the semester. For those of you who previously used the online system this will already be familiar. For those of you still using paper surveys, the data that we collect in the templates will help us improve the accuracy of the SIRS reports and reduce processing time.
If you wish to begin using the online survey, the department chair should please notify us of the decision in writing (email or paper), and refer to our procedures for the online SIRS system.

The processed data from the survey and the comments made by the students on the online form will be compiled quickly and returned to instructor by email, and to department administrators online through Sakai within a day or two after the official grading period ends.

Paper SIRS

Online SIRS

SIRS Results

Sample SIRS Documents

Note: CTAAR generally tries to avoid calling the this process "teaching evaluations". The evaluation of an instructor's performance is an ongoing process that should include peer review, construction of a teaching portfolio, and an assessment of student learning outcomes in addition to student ratings. "Rating survey" is a more accurate term for this one facet of the teaching evaluation process.

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