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How We Evaluate Our Courses

All course surveys were taken by students at the end of the semester. Each question on the survey is rated from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. The system has converted these to a 4.0 scale, similar to a traditional grading system in which 4 is excellent, 3 is above average, 3 is average, 2 is below average, and 1 or below is failing. Thus, for example, if the statement is "Teacher organized the course effectively," a 1 would correspond to a very disorganized course, and a 4 to a very organized course.

How to use the Course Survey System

Deciding what class to take

Examine the pages for the classes you are interested in taking; analyze the rating for "Overall, I would rate this course as good" for each one:

Examine the overall rating; scan the ratings for "How worthwhile was this course?" column.
Examine the ratings for each previous section by clicking on semester links ("Fall 2000"). Keep in mind that most of the per-section ratings are specific to a particular professor.

Find out which professors will teach each class in which you are interested, and read on below.

Choosing a professor from which to take a class

If you want to take a certain class and have time to plan ahead, take it from a professor you will enjoy. If you are not sure about what class to take, or don't have a strong opinion, take a class from a professor you will like.

Teaching effectiveness and how worthwhile a course is are the best indicators; however, you may weigh certain ratings more importantly than others. For example, if you learn visually, look at the rating for "Uses visual aids and blackboards effectively".

Ratings

What do the colored bars mean? Why are some reversed?
The colored bars (red, yellow, green) represent the numerical rating. For most ratings, higher numbers are better; for these ratings, higher ratings have bars that are longer toward the right. For a few ratings, higher numbers are worse (e.g. "Pace of the course is too fast"); for those, higher ratings have bars that are longer toward the left. In both cases, green is good and red is bad.

How do I interpret the statistics?
A rating looks like this:

Professor Blum 46 Respondents

Is enthusiastic about the subject matter 3.8 / 4 ± 0.4

Students rated this item 3.8 out of 4, with a standard deviation of 0.4. By clicking on the color bar you can view a histogram of ratings and detailed statistics, and compare to other ratings for this course and by this professor. The standard deviation shown is the deviation across student responses for this particular query.

Also note the number of respondents (listed at the top of the table). If there were less than 15 respondents, the mean will not be very indicative of how the professor performed.

Over time, ratings generally increase. Recent ratings are on average higher than old ratings. We are designing a plot of this trend. You may interpret it either as ratings inflation or teaching quality improvement over time.

Caveats

Keep in mind, that because it is students who answer this survey, the data may be biased one way or another. A good example of this is that freshman students, new to the department, might rank this class as having a significant work load (which it does, compared to the general education courses they're used to). On the other hand, senior students might give this a lower value, since maybe they expected an impossible work load for the class, but got one that was slightly less than impossible, perhaps about the level of the amount the work in the series, which has classes of fewer units. Also, this guide is only an average and many find that they like a class most hate, or hate a class most like.

Ask humans!

Thus, although this guide is generally very useful in comparing courses, there is no substitution for talking to someone who has actually taken the class. Your department should hold advising each semester, and every student is strongly encouraged to take advantage of this. Also, odds are you'll find a seasoned student in your other classes, don't be afraid to ask them questions.

Ram Surveys is a student-run web site; we are not in any way affiliated with Colorado State University Administration or ASCSU. Please report any errors or incorrect information on our contact page. The data is available to CSU students only and has not been altered in any way to create these reports.