FAQ

The course evaluation provides concrete indications for improving teaching/learning situations and enables the quality of teaching at the University of Bern to be consistently maintained at a high level and further development to be initiated. It also serves as proof of quality towards legislators and the public.

Read more about the purposes of course evaluation here.

The quality representatives of the faculties are responsible for selecting and registering the courses and performance assessments to be evaluated.

The minimum requirements according to the framework concept are:

• each course should be evaluated at least once every three years
• 50% of all performance assessments should be evaluated at least once every 3 years
• the final evaluation is mandatory for new lecturers and those in qualification positions

Read more about mandatory evaluations and cycle here.

Interim evaluation: no predefined interval

Final evaluation: every course has to be evaluated at least once every three years

Evaluation of performance assessment: 50% of all performance assessments have to be evaluated at least every 3 years

You can read more on this topic here: Cycle; data collection times.

Example questionnaires for the interim evaluation, final evaluation, and evaluation of the performance assessment can be found here.

Example questionnaires for supplementary modules are here.

Customizing the standard questionnaires is not possible.

Optional additional question blocks (supplementary modules) can be added to the core questionnaire of the final evaluation. Example questionnaires for supplementary modules are here.

In addition, the faculties can design their own survey instruments; the Teaching Evaluation Office can provide feedback on individually designed questionnaires, but implementation and evaluation cannot be carried out centrally.

Customised questionnaires cannot replace a mandatory final evaluation using a standard questionnaire.

The questionnaires for the interim evaluation, the final evaluation, and for the evaluation of the performance assessment are available in German, English and French (selection of language via the flag in the survey header).

In order to ensure the anonymity of the students, the results of a survey are only forwarded automatically if at least 5 students have participated in the survey. Instructors can receive their results on request if fewer than 5 but more than 2 students have participated in the survey, however, this is regulated on a faculty-specific basis. 

The results of the evaluation of a performance assessment will only be sent out if at least 5 students have taken part in the survey.

Course evaluation is a tool used to measure the extent to which the conditions and target criteria for Good Teaching have been met or achieved. This measurement is based on the students' ratings in the surveys and is therefore only possible through student participation. 

Students benefit from their participation in two ways:

1. Instructors and the university use the survey results to improve teaching. Students benefit from resulting improvements in their courses and performance assessments.  
2. The surveys provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their own behavior and its contribution to their learning success, which may help them to improve in the future.

It is important that all students participate in the survey so that the results are as representative as possible.

You can read more about the purposes of evaluation here.

Interim- and final evaluation: Students receive a link / QR code to the survey mostly from the lecturer or an administrative office in the faculty (e.g. during the course, via email or ILIAS).

Evaluation of the performance assessment: Students receive a link to the survey by email from the Teaching Evaluation Office.

How many and which courses and performance assessments are evaluated in a semester is decided by the faculty. Since some faculties have many or all courses and performance assessments evaluated, it is possible that students have to fill out a relatively large number of questionnaires.

You can read more about the frequency and rotation of the evaluations here.

Yes, all surveys are anonymous.

It is not possible to trace which person has given which answers.

There is a registration deadline for each evaluation (see Deadlines).

There are no specific deadlines for conducting the surveys, as this depends on the schedule of the respective course or performance assessment. However, the surveys can only be extended until two weeks after the end of the semester so that the results can be shared with the faculties in good time.

The final evaluation should be conducted at a time that allows for subsequent discussion of the results with the students (e.g. third last or second last session).

Registration for the evaluation should be done via the KSL (left tab "Lecturer mandatory").

As a rule, a central office at the faculty or institute is responsible for registering the courses and assessments to be evaluated.

In exceptional cases, the lecturers can register (especially in the case of voluntary evaluations).

An overview of the registration modalities and registration deadlines can be found under Deadlines.

In order to avoid administrative idle time, there are no automatic transferals. There should be a conscious decision for an evaluation at the beginning of a semester by a person responsible for course evaluations.

The minimum requirements for the cycle must be observed.

This depends on how the teachers have taught. If the lecturers teach independently of each other, individual feedback for each person makes sense. In this case, the relevant lecturers must be selected in the KSL. Please note that in this case students must complete a separate survey for each person evaluated individually. Therefore, a maximum of three lecturers should be evaluated individually in a course.

If the lecturers are working as a team, the ‘team evaluation’ option can be selected in order to obtain joint feedback for the entire team.

The following applies to the evaluation of performance assessments: One survey is created for each performance assessment. Either an individual survey for the person primarily responsible or a team evaluation can be selected if several teachers are jointly responsible for the performance assessment.

Since spring semester 2022, all surveys for the final, interim and evaluations of the performance assessments have been conducted online.

The advantages of online surveys are manifold: lecturers and administrative staff no longer have to spend time printing and scanning. The results are provided automatically and immediately after completion of the survey. Online surveys also offer the option of integrating several language versions and filter questions. Automatic reminder emails are also possible for surveys with personalised TAN links. Another advantage is sustainability: around 100,000 sheets of paper per semester are saved thanks to online-surveys.

There are online surveys with individual links and general links (see «methods»).

Surveys for interim and final evaluation are usually conducted with general links. Evaluations of performance assessments are generally conducted using individual links.

The evaluation dates depend on the type of evaluation (interim, final or performance assessment evaluation) and the individual dates of the courses and examinations.

You can read more about the dates of the evaluations here.

If you have a preferred date for conducting an online survey, you are welcome to notify the Evaluation Office. Please use this form to do so.

The questionnaires are available in three languages: German, English and French (final evaluation, interim evaluation and evaluation of performance assessment). The language does not have to be selected when registering for an evaluation. Students can select the desired language in the survey by clicking on the corresponding country flag.

The results reports for lecturers can be created in German, English or French (German by default). If you would like the results reports in English or French, please contact the Teaching Evaluation Office.

If a survey was not set up for a course, this course was probably not registered in KSL for the respective evaluation. In this case, contact the Teaching Evaluation Office to check whether a survey can still be set up retrospectively.

Final and interim evaluation: The lecturer distributes the link to the survey to the eligible students via email, publishes it on ILIAS or integrates the QR code to the survey into their presentation. 

Evaluation of the performance assessment: Eligible to participate in online surveys are the students who have received an email with the invitation link. These are the students who are registered for the examination according to the list of participants (by default from KSL).

By default, personalized links, which are only valid once, are used for the evaluations. Once students have completed a survey, they will not be able to complete the same survey again.

The evaluation surveys are recommended for courses with 5 or more participants. For data protection reasons, the results of surveys (interim or final evaluation) with fewer than 5 participants can only be provided on request. In addition, only survey results with 5 or more participants are included in the faculty average.

It is possible to create surveys for smaller courses, but there is no guarantee that the results will be accessible.

Performance assessments are only evaluated using the standardised method if there are 5 or more participants. If there are fewer than 5 participants, no results are provided. For examinations with a small number of participants, the faculties should switch to other, qualitative evaluation methods.

The header of each online survey and report indicates which course and which lecturers the survey relates to. If several lecturers of a course are assessed together in a survey, this is also noted in the header of the survey and the report. (Exception: if there are more than five lecturers, only the main lecturer is listed for reasons of space, followed by ‘et al.’). 

See examples here: Example survey; example report.

Normally, only the lecturers who are included in the evaluation receive detailed results. In some institutes, the report is also sent to the person responsible for the evaluation. At the end of an evaluation period, the aggregated results from evaluations of the entire faculty are sent to the faculty's quality representatives.

Final or interim evaluation: Lecturers receive the evaluation results immediately after the survey closes. A PDF report with an automatic analysis of the survey results and the students' comments is sent by e-mail. An interactive HTML report can also be accessed via a link in the e-mail message.

If the report does not arrive within the expected time, this should be reported to the Teaching Evaluation Office.

Evaluation of performance assessment: The PDF report will only be sent after confirmation of grade release. For more information, see here.

The example PDF reports can be viewed here.

The Teaching Evaluation Office does not allow students to view the evaluation results. However, lecturers should, where possible, discuss the results of the survey, the insights gained and any improvement measures with the students. 

The faculties can publish aggregated results via their channels (e.g. websites).

For more on closing the loops, see here.

The Teaching Evaluation Office does not publish the results. It is possible that individual faculties may publish internal faculty results on their respective channels.

To close the first loop, the framework concept stipulates that lecturers should discuss the results of the survey, the findings and any measures for improvement with the students before the end of the semester. In this way, students learn that lecturers are taking the feedback into consideration.

The detailed report of the final evaluation contains, on the one hand, the overall result, which can be used to determine the overall success level of the course evaluated. It also contains the results of the two indicators ‘learning progress’ and ‘satisfaction’ and the results per question (distribution of answers as well as mean value and standard deviation for scale questions). In addition, the detailed report uses comparative profile lines to show how the results turned out relative to the overall faculty result of the previous year. The answers to the open questions are also listed.

The results of the interim evaluation and the evaluation of the performance assessment are not summarised in an overall result. For these evaluations, the results of the individual questions or indicators can be interpreted in the context of the course or performance assessment.

The course evaluation centre can be consulted at any time for help in interpreting the results. 

The sample reports can be viewed here.

The final evaluations that have achieved the level ‘outstanding’ are nominated for the ALL award (recognition of outstanding achievements in teaching).

The faculties may use additional criteria to decide which of these courses receive the award.

The measures to be taken if the results of a final evaluation are insufficient are specified in the framework concept. The faculties can define additional measures in their own guidelines.

The minimum requirements for the measures according to the framework concept can be found here.

Lecturers have access to a comprehensive range of university didactics services from the Learning & Development department in order to optimise their teaching in a targeted manner.

One way of improving quality is to carry out an interim evaluation in the middle of the semester. This provides purely formative feedback and highlights specific opportunities for improvement by identifying potential weaknesses in teaching.