Online SIRS Details

Also see the Frequently Asked Questions about the online SIRS.

Fall 2009 Dates

• October 16: Departments must provide CTAAR with list of courses that will use the online surveys.
• October 28: CTAAR emails faculty and instructors, listing all of their courses that will use online surveys.
• November 11: Last day for faculty to notify CTAAR of any corrections to survey information.
• November 18 (12:01 a.m.): Survey begins, students are notified by email.
  • November 23, November 28, December 3, December 8: Students who have not responded receive email reminders
• December 10 (11:59 p.m.): Survey ends. Students who have not responded by this time will not be able to complete the survey.
• January 4, 2010: All final grades are due to the registrar.
• January 5 - 12, 2010: Faculty and instructors receive survey results by email, departments receive results for all surveys through a Sakai drop box.

Spring 2010 Dates

• March 17: Deadline for departments to provide CTAAR with list of courses that will use the online surveys.
• April 3: CTAAR emails faculty and instructors, listing all of their courses that will use online surveys.
• April 13: Last day for faculty to notify CTAAR of corrections.
• April 20 (12:01 A.M.) Survey starts, students are notified by email.
  • April 24, April 28, May 2: Students who have not responded receive email reminders
• May 3 (11:59 P.M.) Survey ends
• May 14: All final grades due to the registrar
• May 17 - 21: Faculty and instructors receive survey results by email, departments receive results for all surveys through a Sakai drop box.

Information for Students

• Privacy policy
• Changing the email address used by the system
• Students who do not receive an e-mail may respond by logging directly into https://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal/ and clicking "All Surveys".
• Students, including Summer and Winter Session, can create 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. 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.
• Students can only respond to surveys for classes in which they are officially enrolled (enrollment data is updated daily).
• Students can only reply to a survey once.

Courses Surveyed

• All Summer 2009 courses used the online survey system.
• For Fall 2009, any department or school that would like to move their courses online may do so. Contact us prior to October 16 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 us before October 16. 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.
• During Spring 2009, several units chose to use the online system, including:
  • Ernest Mario College of Pharmacy
  • School of Engineering
  • College of Nursing (all New Brunswick and Newark courses, all Camden Graduate courses)
  • Rutgers Business School
  • New Brunswick Math
  • New Brunswick Spanish & Portuguese
  • Newark Math & Computer Science
  • Camden Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
  • and selected courses in many other departments
• For Fall 2008, we worked with individual departments and schools to determine which courses to survey online. For Summer 2008, all 3rd session New Brunswick courses were surveyed online. All Winter Session 2009 courses were surveyed online. All other courses continued to use the paper SIRS.
• Departments that have chosen not to list the instructors in the Schedule of Classes and have not informed CTAAR of accurate instructor or course information may find that some of their surveys are incorrect or missing. Please contact CTAAR at 732-932-7466 for assistance as soon as possible.

Report Distribution

• Summary data for online surveys is calculated separately from the paper surveys, and the results differentiated in all reports generated by CTAAR. Differences in the survey methodology should be considered by departments when they use survey data.
• Data collected by CTAAR through the online system is processed and returned to instructors and departments after the official grading period closes.
• Reports are emailed directly to instructors.
• Distribution to departments is online through Sakai dropboxes.
• 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.
• Students can view SIRS summary reports (without student comments) for previous semesters at the Student Instructional Rating Survey 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 are complete).
• Distribution methods may change in the future as we further integrate the survey system with the Schedule of Classes and other course data systems (current features of the survey system are unavailable for use until Rutgers can improve the accuracy of course instructor information).