How do I access course evaluations in Sakai?

Course evaluations at PLU are administered through Qualtrics. During an active course evaluation period, which is typically near the end of an academic term, students can access course evaluations through two means:

• a link in an email with the subject line Teaching and Course Feedback - Survey Invitation sent from the Office of the Provost to their PLU Gmail account¹

• an access point in Sakai as illustrated in the steps below. 

Click your initials or current photo in the top right corner of Sakai.

In the ‘Account Menu’, click the ‘Course Evaluations’ link.

The Course Evaluations link in the Account Menu is a shortcut to the Course Evaluations tool located at the bottom of the tool menu of the user’s Home site. Users can instead opt to expand the Home site in Sakai’s site navigation (if Home is in a collapsed state) and click the Course Evaluation tool there to proceed.

Click the ‘Open tool in a new window’ button.

Clicking this button should launch the Qualtrics Course Evaluations - Student Portal in a new browsing tab.

Note: The access point in Sakai to Qualtrics course evaluations is solely for a student portal. Instructors or other users will commonly see the following message: “You do not have any courses to evaluate at this time. Please check again later.” 

Locate a course evaluation to take, and click the ‘To Do’ button.

A table of one or more course evaluations should display during an active course evaluation period. Click the To Do button to begin a corresponding course evaluation.

If launching the course evaluation portal results in an error like the following…

… you can relaunch the Qualtrics Course Evaluations - Student Portal with the following steps. 

Navigate to the Sakai browsing tab that launched the current tab. Then, click ‘Course Evaluations’.

Click either the Course Evaluations link in the top navigation bar or the Course Evaluations tool in the Home site. This should relaunch the course evaluations in Qualtrics in a new browsing tab.² Alternatively, you could try using a different browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Assuming the course evaluations table now displays without error, feel free to close the browsing tab with the error message. 

Note: Students can also access the Qualtrics course evaluations through the aforementioned invitation emails sent to their PLU Gmail accounts.

1. The email will likely be sent from provost@coursefeedback.plu.edu. However, questions regarding the course evaluations should be sent instead to provost@plu.edu. Also, the subject line for the invitation email to students from the Office of the Provost may not be exactly “Teaching and Course Feedback - Survey Invitation” but something like that. 

2. Some browsers might present a ‘pop-up blocker’ enabled to prevent relaunching a new browsing tab and/or a prompt where you can disable the blocker or otherwise “allow the popup”. Grant this permission to proceed.

One common exception to note is Safari on the iPhone which blocks pop-ups by default. For this case, users may need to navigate to the iPhone Settings, select Safari, and turn off the Block Pop-ups switch. After completing the course evaluations, students may want to turn that switch back on.

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Need support? Contact sakai@plu.edu or call 253-535-7525.