Core Questionnaire

Sample Questionnaires

The questionnaires available to course instructors, teaching assistants, and lab instructors prior to Fall 2022 varied by college and department, but always consisted of a "base form" (either the B100 "Basic" form, the E100 "Expanded Form", or the S050 "Teaching Assistant Form"), and would sometimes also include an approved supplement. You can see a sample of what each base form looked like below without supplemental questions added.

Both of the B100 and E100 forms contained the "Core Questionnaire," commonly referred to as the "Core 12 Questions," which were mandatory to meet the university's course evaluation requirements, and were written specifically to evaluate the Instructor of Record (IOR) for a course. The Teaching Assistant form (S050), however, did not contain these questions, and was therefore not considered suitable for evaluating the primary IOR for a course. Department contacts had the option to choose, on behalf of their faculty and teaching assistants, any of these base forms alone, or (depending on their department) with a department-approved supplement. Samples of each form, with all of their respective supplemental questions included, are listed below.

Supplements for the Basic (B) Question Set

Supplements for the Expanded (E) Question Set

Supplements for the Teaching Assistant (S) Question Set

Please Note: While these supplements provided highly specific, in-depth, and valuable insight to instructors, they also added considerably to the amount of time needed for students to complete them. This, in turn, sometimes had a negative impact on response rates, and should be taken into consideration when interpreting results.

Exceptions

Because certain schools, programs, or departments, had different requirements for course evaluation, it's important to determine the "home department" for any cross-listed legacy course evaluations you are reviewing. For example, the Dell Medical School uses an entirely different evaluation system, totally independent from the Legacy CIS System, and UT Law School utilized a special form type created solely for their courses (see below).

Law School Form (S151)

In these cases, the home department would determine which form would be used, and any exceptions had to be coordinated between the department contacts. If you have any questions or concerns about a cross-lsited course being improperly evaluated, please contact the CES Team.

Other Considerations

In 2019, amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, the CES Team (Formerly the "CIS Office") created a new form, the B101 Form. This form was virtually identical to the B100 form, with the exception of the "Comment" portion of the form which included two comment sections, allowing students an opportunity to offer feedback on the course both before and after the sudden and unexpected transition to online instruction.

In Fall of 2008, the University rewrote the Core Questionnaire, expanding it from 8 questions to 12. It also replaced two of the original questions and slightly rewrote one other.

In Spring of 2008, The CES Team (formerly the "CIS Office") published a comprehensive report of three studies addressing whether an eCIS system provides information and security comparable to the paper-based CIS system (eCIS Institution Report August 2008). In 2010, a follow up study was conducted to further explore the effects of paper and electronic use at UT Austin for the past 5 years (Evaluation of Electronic versus Paper CIS Use at UTAustin October 2010).

In Fall of 2006, The University published a study investigating how often students wrote comments, the topics of those comments, how students who wrote comments differed from those who did not, and how the tone of written comments related to overall instructor and course ratings (A Study of Students Written Course Evaluation Comments at a Public University 2006).

Academic Affairs