Various units are involved in the student evaluations of courses: Internal Evaluation is the central instance responsible for technically implementing the surveys and processing the results. This central unit stays in close touch with the decentralised evaluation coordinators in the schools, departments and institutes. The coordinators designate the courses to be evaluated and coordinate communication between the school and the central unit both during and after evaluations.

Student evaluation of courses is primarily a feedback tool designed to give lecturers information about the impression students have formed of their course but also about the preparation and follow-up work that students have done. Lecturers can use this information to reflect on and improve their own teaching practice. In addition, the results can facilitate dialogue with students about the course learning objectives, content and structure.

Evaluation results are also increasingly used by teaching staff in applications for positions or promotions, as they are often welcomed or even required in those contexts.

Each semester, the schools select at least 25% of their courses for evaluation. Varied selection criteria are used, for instance to ensure that courses of different types are evaluated (lectures and seminars) or that a certain number of courses per lecturer are evaluated. In some cases, full surveys are carried out.
In addition to courses selected for mandatory evaluation, voluntary evaluations also take place. See Point 1.5 for more information.

When a course has been selected for evaluation by the relevant school, the evaluation must be carried out in accordance with the “Regulations for conducting student evaluations of courses”. Participating in evaluations is optional for students.
Lecturers can, if desired, choose from a range of evaluation procedures (Available only in German language. Please contact us if you have any questions.) that represent alternatives to the standard procedure. This can be worthwhile especially for courses with small numbers of students.

Yes, courses can be registered for voluntary evaluation up to a certain deadline which falls in mid-May in the summer semester and in mid-November in the winter semester.

Lecturers can register courses for evaluation in Stud.IP by selecting the course and then the “Overview” tab. See here for instructions (Available only in German language. Please contact us if you have any questions.).

Alternatively, you can also contact the evaluation coordinator within your school or the evaluation team to arrange an evaluation. It would be helpful if you could state the course title and number, the desired evaluation format (paper-based or online?) and a suitable evaluation period in your registration.

The student evaluation of courses programme has only been designed to facilitate the evaluation of individual courses listed in Stud.IP and not complete modules comprising several courses. But it can nevertheless be used to evaluate modules, for instance by determining a course that can serve as a placeholder representing an entire module. If you inform students that the course evaluation is intended to serve as a module evaluation, they can give appraisals based on the module as a whole.

When selecting the questionnaires, lecturers can choose between the following options:

• Paper-based or online questionnaires
• German or English questionnaires

Most schools and their individual departments and institutes also have specific questionnaires. In some areas, the questionnaires also vary depending on the course type (e.g. lectures, tutorials, etc.). An overview of the questionnaires currently in use can be found here and in the menu on the left (under “Questionnaires”).

The documents contain both German and English pages. Please scroll through the documents to see the English version.

For technical reasons, it is unfortunately not possible to customise the questionnaire at the level of individual courses. But the generous selection of school-specific and department/institute-specific questionnaires available and the range of course types covered ensure that finding a good fit should be possible.

Yes, the timing of paper-based surveys can be handled flexibly within the course.
Online surveys are made available for a period (normally two weeks) that is recorded in Stud.IP and usually starts four weeks before the end of the lecture period.

This period is determined by the evaluation coordinators in the schools and communicated to us in the Internal Evaluation unit.

If the period that is been defined is not suitable for a given course, lecturers can change it themselves.
Concise instructions are available here (Available only in German language. Please contact us if you have any questions.).

It is possible to repeat the block of questions about the lecturer in the questionnaire to allow students to evaluate more than one lecturer. Students can also be allowed to select lecturers for evaluation. Once the questionnaires have been processed, lecturers receive only the evaluations that relate to their own teaching and the evaluations given for their co-lecturers are not made visible to them.

Repeating the question blocks for each lecturer is generally the standard approach used in online evaluations.

But lecturers can contact their evaluation coordinator to request that repeated question blocks be used or that all participating lecturers should be evaluated together.

Apart from the standard centralised evaluation, other forms of evaluation can also be used. This can be particularly useful for courses with small numbers of students. An overview of the available methods and the levels of time investment involved is available here and here (Available only in German language. Please contact us if you have any questions.).

Online evaluations take place via Stud.IP. Students can participate in class using mobile devices (smartphones, laptops or tablets) or fill in the questionnaires on a desktop computer at home.

QR codes: In the “Evaluation” tab in their course on Stud.IP, lecturers can generate a QR code and a direct link that takes students directly to the right evaluation questionnaire. Lecturers can display this QR code in a presentation towards the end of the course, for instance, or send it to students by email.

When conducting paper-based surveys, lecturers receive either the printed questionnaires via internal mail or a PDF file from their school’s evaluation coordinator which they can print themselves.  The questionnaires are then distributed during the course and completed by the students.

An official survey timeframe of two weeks is defined for the student evaluation of courses. It starts four weeks before the end of the lecture period so that the results of evaluations can be processed in time for them to be discussed with students in the final two weeks of the lecture period.

Online evaluations take place via Stud.IP. During the evaluation period, students see the “Teaching evaluation” tab after selecting their specific course and can access the survey, which runs via an external (and therefore anonymising) server. Students can participate in class using mobile devices (smartphones, laptops or tablets) or complete the evaluations at home. 
It is important that lecturers dedicate some class time to administering evaluations and encourage students to participat, as good response rates can only be achieved in this way.

Paper-based questionnaires are distributed by lecturers during their courses (ideally three to four weeks before the end of the lecture period) and completed by students. The questionnaires are then returned unseen in a sealed envelope to the evaluation coordinator or forwarded directly to the Internal Evaluation team.

Lecturers should discuss evaluations with the students as soon as they become available. For the results to be made available to lecturers, however, the regulations specify that at least 5 students must have participated.

It is also desirable that results be made available to the relevant dean of studies and the relevant evaluation coordinator. The settings to enable this can be defined under the “Teaching evaluation” tab in Stud.IP.

The evaluation period for online surveys can be extended even after it has ended and students can be informed that an additional opportunity to provide feedback is available. Lecturers can extend the period themselves in Stud.IP. The Internal Evaluation team will then reactivate the survey on the next working day, at the latest.

When surveys are conducted online, lecturers receive an email at the end of the survey period to let them know that the results are available for viewing on Stud.IP. The results can be viewed as soon as five students have taken part – even before the end of the survey period.

Notes: There is an option in the “Teaching evaluation” tab to enter the actual number of course participants to ensure that the response rate is calculated correctly – if no entry is made here, the number of registered course participants stored in Stud.IP is used as the basis for the calculation.

When paper-based surveys are conducted, the questionnaires are analysed as quickly as possible by Internal Evaluation and the results are uploaded to Stud.IP. As soon as this process is complete, an information email is sent to lecturers and they can download the evaluation report under the "Teaching evaluation" tab.

Lecturers can share the results of evaluations with their students and/or the relevant dean of studies and evaluation coordinator by activating the option to share results (with or without the answers entered in free-text fields) under the “Teaching evaluation” tab in in Stud.IP.
When lecturers consent to the storage of results, they are stored permanently in the Internal Evaluation system and can also be retrieved by lecturers at a later date.

For questions answered using rating scales (such as “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (4)), the mean value of the answers from the comparison group is shown in grey.

This comparison group is composed of the courses that are being evaluated in the same semester and with the same questionnaire; this means that it is usually made up of courses offered within the same department, institute, or school.

Current questionnaires can be viewed here and this sheds some light on the comparison group for a course.

Note: The values for the comparison group can change while the evaluation is still ongoing, as they are repeatedly recalculated as new survey results are gradually added to the evaluation system.

As soon as lecturers have been informed by email that their evaluation results are available, they can discuss them with their students and also share the evaluation results report, for instance using a data projector.
When online surveys are conducted online during class and students fill them in on their laptops or smartphones, the results are available as soon as at least five students have recorded their answers.
Guidance on presenting results is available here (Available only in German language. Please contact us if you have any questions.).

Lecturers can define whether students should be able to access results (with or without the answers entered in free-text fields) under the “Evaluation” tab in Stud.IP.

Only lecturers themselves receive evaluations of their courses – this is a fundamental principle.
The results of all the evaluated courses at school level and at institute/department level are sent in summarised and anonymised form to the deans of studies and the evaluation coordinators.
The aggregated reports of the schools are published on the Internal Evaluation web pages.

Evaluation results are, first and foremost, a personal feedback tool for lecturers. The university does not use them to derive consequences under employment law or other actions vis-a-vis individual staff members.
If an evaluation shows room for improvement, you can choose from a wide range of courses offered by the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education unit to work on boosting the quality of your teaching.
But students sometimes evaluate a lecturer or the content and delivery of a course inappropriately and criticism may not always be fair. This can trigger emotional stress. Internal Evaluation offers an advisory and counselling service that provides lecturers with professional support as they seek to contextualize and process the significance of student evaluations for their own self-image and for their teaching practice