Instructors should complete the SFF Instructor Form, which was revised in Fall 2016. The form has only two items, one of which is an open-ended response. We are also asking instructors to indicate if time in class was provided for students to complete their feedback.
All instructors expecting course feedback should verify that their course is loaded in TUportal or in the SFF Admin Panel prior to the SFF opening at https://sff.temple.edu/admin. Instructors should also log in to the SFF Website at https://sff.temple.edu to review their course information and to complete the SFF Instructor Form. Instructors will receive a University email when courses are open. For Early Start courses, Short Duration courses, professional school courses and other “off-grid” courses – email communications are sent by school/college liaisons.
Both instructors and students can access the website at https://sff.temple.edu. Remember to fill out your Instructor Form.
Course and instructor information is provided by information listed in Banner. Each school/college Dean’s office has an SFF liaison to review course data for accuracy and inclusion in the feedback process. Please note that courses may have been modified (sections combined) for evaluating purposes only. Please check the enrollment count and form type of your courses listed in the SFF Admin Panel and on the SFF website. If you believe course information is not correct or that your course has at least 5 enrolled students (see below for courses with fewer than 5), then contact the SFF liaison in your School/College as soon as possible.
Generally, courses with enrollment of fewer than 5 students are not included in the SFF administration. This is university policy, because evaluations may jeopardize the confidentiality of the students in sections with low enrollment. You may want to discuss an alternative method of evaluation with your department chair or with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) is knowledgeable about alternative methods of assessing teaching and courses. CAT provides consultations, workshops, online resources and much more about Assessment and Feedback for all Temple educators. https://teaching.temple.edu/resources/assessment-feedback
Using class time is the best way to help boost response rates. On the recommendation of the Assessment of Instruction Committee, The Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies has asked instructors to set aside class time for the completion of SFFs.
The SFF website is mobile-friendly, so instructors and students can complete their SFFs on a smartphone or mobile device. Written feedback is likely to be more robust if students are encouraged to use their computers on the date of the administration.
To help ensure a good response rate and receive thoughtful feedback from students, we encourage you to communicate with your students about SFFs and the importance of their feedback. It is particularly helpful for instructors to talk about the types of feedback they find useful and provide examples of how they have used student feedback in the past.
The system will automatically save anything that students fill out or write. If a student clicks "Save" or "Complete", they may still return to the feedback form to complete or edit their responses until the SFF is closed by clicking "Resume Feedback" or "Modify Feedback". If they forget to go back in and complete the form, the answers that they have submitted will be saved and included in the final analysis.
Yes, although students will receive university-generated email reminders to complete their SFFs, instructors will be primarily responsible for the administration of SFFs. In addition to setting aside class time, please remind students to complete the forms if they have not already done so, emphasizing the importance of receiving student feedback.
On the website, students and instructors can see the percentage of students in each of their classes who have submitted their SFFs, as well as the response rates for their depart ent, school/college, and the university. We hope this is helpful to instructors throughout the evaluation period, as they will be able to monitor the response rates for their classes.
Although students will receive university-generated email reminders to complete their SFFs, instructors may also want to send an email reminder to their students. We’ve included sample wording below, to help facilitate instructor emails.
Please be sure to complete your SFFs this semester. You should have received a link to the website, and completing the evaluation online is easy to do and will only take a few minutes. Your feedback about the course will be very helpful to me as I plan for future semesters. Here is the link to the website – sff.temple.edu.
Generally, an initial email is sent to students on the day that an SFF opens to students. We send three to four reminders (more for full-term courses) to non-responders before the last day to complete SFFs.
In addition to speaking to students during class, you can use Canvas and email to help encourage students.
The Assessment of Instruction Committee feels strongly that the use of incentives directly related to the academic assessment of student course performance (e.g. course points or extra credit) has the potential to skew particular SFF results and should not be used. By contrast, non-academic incentives, such as food for the whole class, are acceptable.
SFF results and analysis will be made available to instructors in the Reports menu of the SFF Admin Panel at https://sff.temple.edu/admin after the grading deadline has passed. For Instructor SFF reports administered prior to Fall 2020 in the previous SFF system, please go here.
SFF Data for Students is only available to new matriculated students and students who have completed all of their prior semester's SFFs. Students can access SFF Data for Students on TUportal Student Tools tab. To have access to these data during future semesters, students must complete all course SFFs at the end of each semester.
Instructors who have received an SFF report within the last two years can view their own data as they appear to students. To see these data, log in to the TUportal, click on the Faculty Tools tab, and click on Data for Students in the Student Feedback Forms (SFF) channel on the right hand side of the screen. Instructors will continue to have access to their full Instructor Reports through the Reports menu of the SFF Admin Panel at https://sff.temple.edu/admin. For Instructor SFF reports administered prior to Fall 2020 in the previous SFF system, please go here. In addition, a link for the SFF Admin Panel is located on the left side of TUportal under TUApplications named “SFF Form Creator and Reporting”.