Course Evaluations

Your feedback is vital to the educational direction of SPS! Students provide invaluable feedback often used by instructors to make changes in their content and/or delivery of the course; ultimately bettering the student experience. Responses that give students’ perspectives to class lectures, readings, assignments, and exams are particularly helpful. This important information is also used for faculty reviews.

Student responses are anonymous. The School of Professional Studies is committed to maintaining the anonymity and confidentiality of its course evaluations. No faculty or staff can identify which students completed evaluations or the responses from a particular student. Student responses are anonymous for both third week and final course evaluations.

Watermark is the online survey platform used at Columbia University. It is a third-party data service provider. No identifying information is included in the results stored in the system or seen by the instructor; for both third-week and final course evaluations, Watermark disassociates identifying information from survey responses. Course evaluation reports are created in aggregate and never include student identifiers.

No. Third-week and final course evaluation responses do not affect students’ grades. Instructors do not see their final course evaluation results until after final grades are submitted. Although instructors receive third-week evaluations prior to their final grade submissions, responses are kept anonymous and they do not impact grades.

If you feel you need additional assistance for issues of anonymity, grades, or confidentiality, please contact your academic advisor for additional support.

Student feedback on the content of the course and on the instructor style of teaching are valuable elements to the courses offered at SPS. Individual instructors find the comments students leave useful when designing the structure of their courses, and for their own personal development.

Student feedback on the content of the course and on the instructor's style of teaching are valuable elements of the courses offered at SPS. Individual instructors find the comments students leave useful when designing the structure of their courses and for their own personal development.

Specific suggestions that focus on your learning are more useful than general critiques. Both positive and negative feedback is most helpful when specific.

For example, instead of just writing, “It’s all lecture,” say, “A short break would help me pay attention for the full lecture” or “We need more time for student questions during lecture.”

Or instead of, “Discussions were great!”, say “I loved how you created an environment where students were willing to share perspectives” or “It was really helpful when you summarized key takeaways made in a discussion.”

Comments that are not related to your learning diminish the value of your feedback. For example, it is not helpful to comment upon an instructor’s appearance or to include personal insults in your feedback.

Course evaluation data are reviewed by senior administrators to check program performance, and strategically determine areas for professional development. Student course evaluations are essential to the continual improvement of the courses of instruction at SPS.

Unfortunately, evaluations cannot be completed after the deadline.

Once a course evaluation has been submitted, you cannot go back to make changes. Please make sure you are certain of your responses before submitting.

Previous course evaluations can be accessed on Vergil, Columbia's course planner service, at https://vergil.registrar.columbia.edu/.  

If you are having problems logging in, please send an email to sps-evals [[at]] columbia [[dot]] edu ().