As you prepare to enter a new term, please review the following items. These considerations will help ensure that you are fully equipped and ready for a successful term.
Introducing your Course Evaluation and Surveys (CES) platform to new staff and students
- Create a plan to introduce and explain how Watermark Course Evaluations and Surveys works to your newly hired staff, as well as new or transfer students
- New faculty/student orientations are a great setting for this!
- Consider using the General Surveys functionality to solicit feedback on the platform from new staff/students
Changes in administrative personnel?
- If you have had any changes in administration (ie Deans, Department Chairs, etc.), review your Manage Administrators section of your account to ensure the most accurate and current roster of your personnel
- If your current admins have changed roles, check their admin “role” and hierarchy level access
Have you made any changes to surveys since last term?
- Make sure those changes are reflected in your surveys in the system
- If you are creating a new course main survey but want to keep some of the questions from a previous survey, refer to our Linked Question and Item Banks article in the Help Center for how to successfully complete this task
- If you have questions related to COVID-19, consider adding them as Targeted Survey questions or, alternatively, in the form of a General Survey
Review email communication language
- Look over your email communication language to see if any changes are needed
- Did staff and students have any feedback about email language? Consider updating your communications to more clearly reflect your messaging (if needed)
Review reporting options
- A new term can be a good time to take a look at the Report Setup options in your projects and determine which you will be using for this new term the current response rate for course evaluations, survey start/end dates, and completion date (if the user has submitted the survey)
- If you haven’t used certain Report Setup features, the Help Center offers detailed articles about the features and how to use them
Review your Project(s)
- As best practice, perform a Project Review and make adjustments as necessary prior to Project deployment.