Teacher/Course Evaluations at USU

Each semester instructors are expected to evaluate their courses using a standardized teacher/course evaluation form. Every semester over 2,000 courses are evaluated. Among the questions on the form are two that provide a general assessment of the course and its instructor:

1. The overall quality of this course was:

2. The instructor’s effectiveness in teaching the subject matter was:

The student responds by marking one of the following categories:

Excellent Very Good Good Fair Poor Very poor Not applicable

(6) (5) (4) (3) (2) (1)

The responses are coded using the numeric values shown above, and class means are computed for each question. For example, a course where all the students graded the overall quality of the course as “excellent” would have a mean of 6.0.

In general, USU students seem to be quite satisfied with the quality of their classes. For the most recent three semesters, the mean for all courses evaluated was 4.9 for “overall quality of course” and 5.0 for “instructor’s effectiveness.”

By clicking on a department at the left, the mean responses to these two questions can be seen for the courses of individual instructors in the department.

It is important to note that student evaluations are but one indicator of the quality of a course and its teacher. Other useful sources of information are faculty biographical sketches and course syllabi. These are available in department offices and on department web sites.