SIRS Results

Student Instructional Rating Survey, Numeric Results

Students

View SIRS Results

Finish Current Surveys

Privacy Statement

Faculty and Staff

SIRS Reports SIRS Grid

Instructor Info QR Code Administrator Info

Student Instructional Rating Survey Results

The Student Instructional Rating Survey (SIRS) is conducted university-wide at the end of each semester, gathering student comments about their experiences in the classroom. The results are used by the individual instructors, departments, schools and the University as part of the teaching evaluation process, along with peer observation, teaching portfolios, and other direct and indirect measures. Faculty are asked to provide summaries of the student survey statistics for personnel decisions such as tenure, promotion or merit-based pay. The student opinions reflected through SIRS are an integral part of the larger process.

SIRS results for the most recent semester will be posted approximately 10 – 12 weeks after the end of the semester, e.g., Fall results are published in late March.
Results include data for Fall and Spring semesters only, for the past 10 years.
Comments about improving this web site are welcome at otear@rutgers.edu

SIRS is administered by the Office of Teaching Evaluation and Assessment Research. More information about SIRS deadlines and processes is available on the main OTEAR web site.

Writing Constructive Feedback

Student feedback plays an important role in improving instruction and course delivery. Your comments can help instructors learn about their teaching strategies and provide valuable insight for departments planning and designing future courses. The results are used at multiple levels by the individual instructors, departments, and schools to support ongoing assessment.

Tips for Giving Constructive & Meaningful Feedback

Focus on your learning experience—Share how aspects of the course content and instruction helped or hindered your understanding of the material. Think about what supported your learning and what could be improved. Consider elements that can be changed (the time of a course in the morning is typically out of the instructor’s control).
Be respectful—Your feedback is a professional communication and comments should be relevant to the course content or instruction. Derogatory or offensive language is inappropriate and unhelpful.
Be clear and specific—Provide examples and constructive suggestions about activities, assessments, discussions etc.

Examples of Constructive Feedback:

Less Helpful (something the instructor can’t change like the time of the class) or Vague (would someone reading your comment ask why?)	More Helpful (specific and reasonable improvements to assist your learning or explanations of how the course helped you learn)
“The instructor was awesome!”	“The instructor used a variety of activities to keep me engaged throughout the class and was genuinely concerned about my learning”
“Improve organization of the class”	“The syllabus and Canvas gave no indication of what was due each class, where or how you had to submit, and these details were often buried in Canvas and difficult to find.”
“Tests were not on what I learned”	“It was difficult to know what topics to review for an exam and it would have been helpful to have a review guide that explicitly detailed the relevant material.”

Frequently Asked Questions

The survey system will never reveal your participation unless you choose to print your own receipt. To print a receipt, go to https://sirs.rutgers.edu/blue, then print the “Dashboard” page that shows all of your surveys and whether each one has been completed. You must print all receipts before the survey ends. After the survey ends, it will disappear from the system and and we will not be able to generate a receipt due to the anonymity of the surveys.

Yes, but not with one click. The system will stop sending you email reminders when you complete or opt out of all your surveys. Each course survey is independent of the others, so they won’t completely stop until you opt out or complete each one. To opt out of your surveys, go to https://sirs.rutgers.edu/blue and click on the survey – the choice to opt out is the first question. You can choose to opt back in later, if desired.

Go to https://sirs.rutgers.edu/blue and log in with your NetID, and you’ll find all your surveys. If you have never used your NetID yet, you need to activate your NetID to set a password. You should also make sure that the email address that the university has on file is correct, you can do that on the “Manage NetID” site.

Instructors may change the survey dates for their own courses, so not every survey will appear at the same time. In general, surveys are available during the last week of class meetings. You can check for upcoming surveys on the response rate page.

In addition, a few courses may not have a survey (for instance, independent studies or courses with only one student enrolled).

Some schools and online programs choose to block your access to the canvas course site until you complete the survey. If you have already submitted the survey and still cannot access the Canvas site, try the following steps:

Make sure you reload the Canvas dashboard.
Try leaving the Canvas web site then signing back in.
Double-check that you have clicked “submit” on the final page of the survey instead of just closing the tab (even if you chose not to answer the questions).

You will only get surveys for courses that you are enrolled in, but we sometimes list the name of the wrong professor. Just let us know by clicking the link on the survey form, and we’ll fix it as quickly as possible.

In other cases, you may have more than one instructor who is teaching different groups of students in the same class – for instance Chem 161 has many recitation instructors who you may or may not work with. You should fill out the surveys for the TAs or instructors who you have, and you can skip the questions for the other instructors.

No. Your instructor will only know the total number of students who responded, but will never see who chose to participate or not. Please see our privacy statement for full details.

No. Your professors will not see the survey results until after they submit final grades to the registrar.

By the last week of the course, you should have enough grading and feedback from your professor on homework, midterms, projects, stated grading policy, etc., to accurately judge whether your professor grades fairly or not. It’s not necessary to know your exact final grade in order to answer this question – in fact we deliberately try to end the survey before you know your final grade in order to help prevent grades and survey ratings from influencing or affecting one another.

You can go back and change your responses up until the survey due date (you can click the link even if it appears to be grayed out).

After the due date, we cannot change your response since the survey is anonymous and we can’t tell which response is your in order to correct it. However we do have a process in place where your instructor can request corrections after they get the results, but only if the mistake really stands out (like you gave an excellent teacher awful ratings, or commented on the wrong course). You may want to let your instructor know that you made a mistake so they know to look out for it and request a correction later. But in many cases the error falls within the expected margin of error, and will average out over time.

Log-in information is confidential. It is used only to determine which surveys you can take, and to prevent you from responding more than once to the same survey. All reports generated by OTEAR only include anonymous, aggregate data. See the privacy statement for more information. Instructors will only see anonymous data, and only after final grades have been submitted.

Most instructors read their own surveys and take the student comments very seriously, particularly if the comments are well thought out, honest, and constructive. Results are also read by department chairs and promotion committees. And many students will look at the SIRS Results before chosing which courses to take.

University-wide, the survey results are used as part of the faculty promotion and tenure review process, they are also posted at the SIRS Results web site for students to review. While the use of the survey data varies within individual academic units, it is often used as part of a review process for improving the curriculum, implementing changes to teaching strategies, or reappointment review for part-time lecturers and teaching assistants. Many faculty and instructors use the survey data, in particular the comments, to assess and improve their own teaching methods.

OTEAR sends the comments directly to the instructors and to the academic departments. The comments are completely anonymous and grouped by question. Comments are not published.

This website and the content therein, including the Student Instructional Ratings Survey data, is Rutgers’ proprietary and confidential information and protected by copyright and trademark laws and various other intellectual property rights and unfair competition laws of the United States, foreign jurisdictions, and international conventions (“Proprietary Information”). You are allowed access to this Proprietary Information solely contingent on your permissions granted to you by Rutgers based upon your student or employment status within Rutgers and corresponding NetID (“Permitted Access”).

By accessing this website, you agree to keep the Proprietary Information confidential and not to disclose, aggregate, alter, copy, or share the Proprietary Information without Rutgers’ prior written consent. You may discuss the Proprietary Information solely with those persons who have Permitted Access. You understand that improper dissemination of this Proprietary Information would materially damage Rutgers, and if improperly released, Rutgers will seek appropriate action for any violation of Rutgers’ policies.

Please be advised that the University Counsel has determined that posting Student Instructional Rating Survey information for Teaching Assistants must cease as of Fall 2004 because of the requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99). Therefore no records for any Teaching Assistants will be available on this site as of Fall 2004 and for future terms.