End of Semester Student FAQ

Go to the evaluations dashboard. Then log in with your PennKey.

There are three main reasons students should complete course evaluations.  

1. Strengthen teaching at Penn: Instructors use the course evaluations to improve their teaching. Each instructor receives a compilation of the anonymized responses and the comments to use in evaluating their own teaching and planning future courses.  
2. Make Penn Course Review better: The Penn Course Review relies on course evaluations to compile the guide many students use for choosing classes. More evaluations and comments will lead to more information when students are selecting courses.  
3. Assess instruction: Department chairs, Deans, and the Provost use student reviews as a part of the tenure and promotion process. Teaching excellence matters in deciding whether a professor gets promoted. For adjunct faculty and graduate student teachers, evaluations are used by department administrators and supervisors to improve performance and make hiring decisions.  

As a student, you will get an email inviting you to evaluate your courses through the evaluations dashboard with your PennKey. You will see a list of evaluations, usually one per section. Complete the evaluation for each section separately. You can save and come back later to complete any given evaluation as long as the evaluation window is open. Once an evaluation has been submitted, you can’t change it, so you might want to double check that you’ve evaluated the class you meant to evaluate.  

Most evaluations have approximately 20 questions (more if you have additional instructors) and will take five to ten minutes to complete.  

The evaluations open in the last few weeks of class through the end of the exam period. If you do not complete evaluations, you may receive one or more email reminders until the evaluation period ends. During the evaluation window, students who have not evaluated their courses will be prompted to do so when they check their grades in Courses @ Penn. 

Students may still access grades without completing an evaluation if they opt out. If you do not opt out or complete the evaluations, you can see your grades after the evaluation window closes.

No. In order to preserve the integrity of the evaluation responses, evaluations must be completed within a reasonable period after completion of the course and before grades are available to students.

Instructors are not able to see reports on their course evaluations for a given semester until after the grade submission period is over for that semester.  

Although each student uses PennKey authentication when logging onto the system and the system uses that information to present the proper courses to evaluate, the student’s name and Penn ID are not stored with the evaluation record.