Guiding Principles for Online Evaluation of Courses

The Executive Committee and Academic Council have approved the following set of guidelines regarding online evaluation of courses. These are in effect as of September 20, 2018.

1. Blue is the only official online course evaluation system for JMU.
2. Academic departments are required to use the Blue Online Course Evaluation system for all online courses they offer. 
3. Course evaluations include questions selected by the academic department and any questions that an individual faculty member wants to add to their own course's evaluation. Evaluations will not include questions at the college or university levels.
4. Departments and faculty are encouraged, but not required to select questions from a pre-developed "bank" available on this website. 
5. All evaluations will use a 5-point Likert scale where 5 is the greatest value and 1 is the lowest value (for example 5 = strongly agree and 1 = strongly disagree).
6. The standard evaluation period for full semester fall and spring courses starts approximately 2 weeks prior to the start of exams and closes at midnight before the first day of exams. Exceptions: 1) the length of evaluation periods is adjusted for block classes and other classes with a compressed schedule; 2) faculty can use the Date Select feature to restrict or lengthen the evaluation period as long as the adjusted period is within 10 days prior to the start of exams and the last day of exams.
7. The University Provost will not have access to individual reports without going through the department's Academic Unit Head.
8. Results from questions added to evaluations by individual faculty during the Question Personalization period are excluded from the Academic Unit Head's copy of the evaluation report.
9. Evaluation reports are generated for all courses, regardless of class size.
10. Aggregate departmental reports for Academic Unit Heads will not include individual comments.