Course/Instructor Opinion Survey FAQ
1. What is the Online Course/Instructor Opinion Survey?
2. Who administers the Course/Instructor Opinion Survey?
3. How do I login to the survey page?
4. How do I choose a Class/Instructor combination to survey?
5. Why do I have a course listed to be surveyed more than once?
6. How do I complete a survey?
7. Can I write as much as I want in the comment boxes? Why are there two comment boxes?
8. How is my privacy protected?
9. Why do I keep getting timed out while doing the survey?
10. Why do you care if I live on or off campus?
12. I use Microsoft Explorer and it is not working properly, what's up?
13. I don't want to allow cookies, why do you make me?
14. I have been filling out these surveys for years and nothing changes, why bother?
1. What is the Online Course/Instructor Opinion Survey?
The Course-Instructor Opinion Survey has existed at Georgia Tech since at least 1987. As of 1998, this system was still partially based on Georgia Tech's Cyber computer, with students completing surveys on scanner sheets. With the retirement of the Cyber and the year 2000 approaching, the computer-based part of the surveys were going to have to move elsewhere, making a rewrite of the system inevitable. It was further decided that the survey process should be upgraded to a fully interactive web-based system to reduce paper use, and to reduce staff time.
2. Who administers the Course/Instructor Opinion Survey?
The Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, CETL, was established in 1986 to support the faculty of Georgia Tech in their efforts to improve the teaching and learning environment on our campus.
Among its other missions, CETL has been responsible for coordinating and processing Course/Instructor Opinion Surveys for nearly 20 years. For additional information, see their web site at http://www.cetl.gatech.edu/. You can also email them at: cetlhelp@gatech.edu
3. How do I login to the survey page?
The login page is http://www.coursesurvey.gatech.edu. To do your surveys, you will need your GT account and (password that you use with spectrum mail.
4. How do I choose a Class/Instructor combination to survey?
Once you have logged in, the Online Course/Instructor Opinion Survey program will check whether surveys are being held right now. If not, the program will ask you to try again at the appropriate time. If surveys are being held, the survey program will then check your schedule for the current term. If you do not have classes for which surveys are needed, the program will let you know; thanks for checking in.
If you do have classes that need surveys, you will be presented with a list of classes.Choosing a class/instructor combination is simple. Just click the name you want, and then click the CONTINUE button.
5. Why do I have a course listed to be surveyed more than once?
If you have a class with more than one instructor, there will be an entry for each instructor of that class. This gives you the ability to individually review your instructors. For example, if you have a class with two instructors, where one instructor was excellent and one was not, you can give kudos to the excellent instructor and deal appropriately with the other instructor. It may require more effort, but it gives you the power to give the praise and blame to the right people.
6. How do I complete a survey?
You would first need to log in (see Question 3). The survey contains ten multiple-choice style questions for which you select the appropriate radio button. You can also add free-form comments if you like. There is also a space for comments about the survey process itself. As with the course/instructor comments, this is optional.
Once you have completed a survey, click the SUBMIT ANSWERS button at the bottom of the page. This will process and transmit your survey. If you have additional surveys that need completion, you will be asked to do them at this point. Be aware that there is no way to undo or revise a survey once you have submitted it -- the program will not know which answers are yours.
7. Can I write as much as I want in the comment boxes?
Why are there two comment boxes? The comment boxes allow limited comments. You have exactly 200 characters of space for each individual question. Additional comments at the end of the survey allow 4,000 characters.
Be sure you put the comments in the appropriate boxes. Only instructors can see the individual course survey comments and the CETL personnel only read the comments about the survey process itself (these are separated from individual course comments).
8. How is my privacy protected?
There are separate database tables that record (A) that you participated in a survey and (B) your survey results. One portion of the program needs to know who completed a survey for a given course/instructor so the same person can only complete a survey for a course/instructor once. This portion of the program does not, however, need to know the person's survey selections -- only whether this person went through the survey process. This information makes up our participation table (A), in which only student IDs and courses/instructors are recorded.
Obviously, another portion of the program needs to record the responses selected and the comments made in the survey, but this portion of the program does not need to know who gave these responses/comments. This information makes up our survey results tables (B), in which your answers and comments are recorded. Each answer or comment is associated with the class/instructor about which the answer or comment was made, but no student IDs are recorded. The only additional information recorded is an answer set ID to identify which answers came from the same person, but it will not identify who that person is. The answer set ID itself is just a sequential number; your survey answers get the next-highest number than the number used in the previous survey.
9. Why do I keep getting timed out while doing the survey?
The timeouts were added to the pages to enhance security in a public computer setting. As many of you are aware, web pages can be cached in the web browser's memory and revisited minutes or hours after the page was originally accessed. Without timeouts, if you used a public computer to do your surveys, someone could come behind you and complete all your unfinished surveys, saying whatever they want. Timeouts help prevent this situation from occurring by placing an upper limit on how long each page can be (re)used without causing problems for legitimate surveys. If you do encounter problems with timeouts, let us know about it in the "survey comments" box.
Security timeouts consist of a timer built into each web page that allows you only a certain amount of time to complete that page and move to the next one. The amount of time varies depending on what you are being asked to do, from 25 minutes to complete a survey to 2 minutes for the login and class selection pages. In every case, the time should easily be more than you need to complete the page. If the time allotted does run out, you will be informed when you try to go to the next page and asked to login again. Should a timeout occur on the survey page, any unsubmitted responses will be lost.
10. Why do you care if I live on or off campus?
This question was put in so that we can do some statistical analysis to see if a disproportionate number of students housed off campus are not filling with direct Internet connection does not cause you not to complete the survey.
11. Why didn't you change the survey contents while you were changing the process?
We only wanted to change one thing at a time. Changing a campus-wide survey that impacts all instructors on campus is a very challenging process that takes significant amount of time (usually one or more years).
12. I use Microsoft Explorer and it is not working properly, what's up?
While testing was done to try to ensure that this survey would work with all current browsers, it does sometimes fail when using Explorer. Try it with other browsers.
13. I don't want to allow cookies, why do you make me?
In order to ensure that you fill out the survey only once for each class, we must use cookies. They are only sent back to the application server. If you are opposed to allowing cookies on your machine, you may fill out the survey from a computer cluster machine instead.
14. I have been filling out these surveys for years and nothing changes, why bother?
Change is slow and the only way you can expect a faculty member to change is to give feedback, so please continue to fill out your surveys.
15. I am confused, for all those questions with only one option of N/A... do I have to mark them or can I just skip them?
Either way - no statistics will be gathered on those responses, so do whichever you prefer.