/Office of the Provost
Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

Course Evaluations

Every semester, students have the opportunity to evaluate their courses against a vetted series of evaluation questions. Faculty can customize their course evaluations to ask additional questions that are relevant to their own course development plans.

During the Spring 2025 semester, we launched an updated list of course evaluation questions. Starting in 2023, we convened deans and hosted a series of meetings with a faculty committee. We also collected resources and looked at our peer institutions to establish benchmarks. In consultation with the faculty committee, we began drafting new questions and soliciting feedback through meetings and surveys to faculty, administrators, and students. After discussing the results of those surveys, faculty voted on the penultimate list of questions, and the committee approved the final questions. These questions were approved by the University Sentate during the 2024-25 academic year. For more information, please review the Course Evaluations Slides from the February 2025 University Senate Meeting. 

Stony Brook University uses Anthology Course Evaluations. Login below to see the current evaluation data (Fall 2022-Present):

Course Evaluation Login

Generating a Course Evaluation Report

Use the logins below to see previous evaluation data (summer 2022 or earlier): 

Faculty Login Department Admin Login

 

Evaluation Timeline

Semester or Term Notification to Faculty and Administrators Evaluation Surveys Open Evaluation Surveys Close Results Made Available to Faculty Results Posted to Classie
Fall Semester (Main Interval) First week of November Third week of November Third week of December; Last day of term per the academic calendar After academic standing has been processed; typically first week of January By the end of January
Spring Semester (Main Interval) First week of April Third week of April Third week of May; Last day of term per the academic calendar After academic standing has been processed; typically first week of June By the end of June
Winter Session Second week of January Last Monday of winter session Sunday after classes end 10 days after survey close By the end of February
Summer Session I Third week of June  Fourth week of June Last day of session I classes 10 days after survey close Second week of September
Summer Session I Extended Fourth week of June Second week of July Last day of session I extended classess 10 days after survey close Second week of September
Summer Session II Session and II Extended First week of August Second week of August Last day of session II and extended classess 10 days after survey close Second week of September

In addition to the main semesters/terms listed above, evaluations are administered for courses with varying start/end dates (shorter intervals in PeopleSoft). For these smaller administrations, faculty and administrators are notified one week before evaluations open, surveys remain open for at least one week, and faculty receive results 10 days after evaluations are closed.

 

General Course Evaluation Information

In Fall 2010, with Faculty Senate and Provostial approval, Stony Brook adopted an online course evaluation system that began during the Spring 2011 semester. This adoption was preceded by a pilot test of the system in Fall 2010 involving 200 course sections and significant discussion with stakeholder groups across the University.

The system is in place for all West campus courses, and serves the majority of HSC programs. All undergraduate and graduate courses will be evaluated online, unless department chairpersons designate courses that should not be evaluated (such as dissertation, readings, small seminars, etc.) 

The system is hosted by an external company which provides an extensive set of services including the survey engine, question banks, pre-created analysis and reports of the survey results, as well as a system for managing survey assignments and email reminders to faculty and students. The system is accessible via any Web browser from any Internet-connected device or computer.

Faculty and students will automatically receive email notifications and instructions before and during each of the following events.

  1. Instructors will be given 7-10 days before the evaluation period starts to prepare their own customized questions and add them to the evaluation system.
  2. Student access to the course evaluations will start during the final third of a course (approximately four weeks before for full semester courses), and will end the last day of the official final examination period. Students will receive multiple email reminders during this period if at least one course evaluation remains uncompleted.

All instructors and teaching assistants listed as primary and secondary instructors in PeopleSoft/SOLAR are evaluated. If a faculty member manages a course, but does not teach it, he or she should be listed in the SUP field in PeopleSoft to prevent an evaluation being assigned. It is very important that instructor information for courses be correct in PeopleSoft prior to the beginning of each evaluation period or faculty may not get evaluated or the wrong instructor may be evaluated for a course.

All instructional staff who are assigned as Primary Instructors or Secondary Instructors are evaluated, including TAs.  It is important for academic departments to enter TA teaching assignments accurately and in a timely manner in order for the course evaluations to be accurately assigned, usually within the first 4 weeks of the semester. If your courses are not listed or you are listed as teaching the wrong course, please contact your department administrator to make the changes in SOLAR and contact the CELT Course Evaluation Team to make corrections in the course evaluation system: CourseEval@stonybrook.edu

Evaluations are assigned based on the data entered by departmental staff in SOLAR. Please contact the appropriate staff member in your department to ensure that your correct teaching assignments are up to date before each semester's evaluation period begins. If you are assigned an evaluation for a course that you are not teaching or have not been assigned to a course that you are teaching, please contact the person in your department who is responsible for maintaining faculty teaching assignments in Peoplesoft/SOLAR. Then, that person needs to contact the CELT Course Evaluation Team: CourseEval@stonybrook.edu 

Yes, policies and procedures determined all courses including low enrollment will automatically be evaluated except those designated as TUTorial or SUPervisory or CLN (clinical).  

However, faculty and departments can choose to evaluate these courses by submitting an exception request.  To submit an exception request, fill out the exception form. Please note you must be logged in to your Stony Brook Google account to complete the form.

The system administers separate evaluations for all instructors in the course. Common questions such as those focused on the learning space are delivered only one time to each student within each course.

Technical support regarding login, navigation, incorrect instructor assignments, adding custom questions, downloading reports/data, and interpreting results is available to all users. Please email CourseEval@stonybrook.edu for details.

About Course Evaluations

Faculty can add their own questions. You can add questions from the question bank or, submit a question to be added. If you choose a question from the question bank, you will need to select it each semester. 

Requests for new questions not already in the question bank must be submitted at least three business days prior to the survey becoming active.

  1. The instructor clearly communicated what was expected of me in this course and the rules of classroom engagement. [5-point Likert scale: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree]
  2. The instructor was effective in teaching the subject matter. [5-point Likert scale: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree]
  3. I think the overall quality of the course was [Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor].
  4. The course content (assignments, readings, lectures, etc.) helped me meet the learning expectations set forth by the instructor. [5-point Likert scale: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree]
  5. The textbook, readings and required resources were valuable. [Agree / Disagree / I did not read the required materials / No text, readings or resources were required]
  6. The class environment was inclusive towards people of diverse backgrounds, identities, life experiences and diversity of thought. [5-point Likert scale: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree]
  7. The methods of evaluating my work were fair. [5-point Likert scale: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree]
  8. On average, how many hours did you spend on the course outside of class? [0-3 hours / 4-6 hours / 7-9 hours / 10+ hours]
  9. What did you find most valuable about this course? [open]
  10. In what ways could the course be improved? [open]

Deans, Department Chairs, or their designated administrators can add questions for all courses in a department (see steps 6-9).  To request questions be added for all current and future sections of a specific course (e.g. WRT102), please contact courseeval@stonybrook.edu

Evaluation Results

The evaluation data is made available approximately 15 days after the evaluation period ends to ensure that all grades have been submitted. While the Registrar's grade submission guidelines ask for grades to be submitted 72 hours after final exams, many faculty do not submit grades for several weeks. Consequently, results are delayed until the Registrar indicates that all grades have been submitted. 

Faculty are able to review their own evaluation reports, including student comments, before they are published to the university community, by logging into Course Evaluations. 

After reviewing student feedback from the evaluation reports, faculty may request redaction of any comments that harass, threaten, defame, slander or otherwise fall outside the scope of the course by submitting a request to the department chair.

Course evaluation results will be emailed to faculty and approved reviewers after the survey concludes and grades are posted. Approved reviewers can access the evaluation results of all the faculty within a department and generally tend to be department chairs or their designees. Should chairs wish to designate additional reviewers they should email a request which includes the reviewer's 9-digit Stony Brook ID Number to CourseEval@stonybrook.edu. 

When the online system was being considered by faculty, conversations were conducted with student government and they told us that many students rely on public "rate-my-professor" websites to make course decisions and expressed instead the desire to see Stony Brook's instructor ratings to make informed course choices. Subsequently, the University Faculty Senate approved a motion to make course evaluation data available to students. 

The evaluation data will remain online as long as the University maintains its contract with this vendor. Each semester, all Stony Brook results are exported and stored in the data warehouse along with all previous course evaluation results so that faculty course summaries will always be available.