Explorance Blue: Student Rating of Teaching Response Rate Monitor Overview

Prior to changes in teaching and learning due to COVID-19, Student Rating of Teaching (SRT) was up to 70% paper-based. Remote instruction created the opportunity to transition to predominantly online submissions that simplifies the process for students.

The online SRT has an intuitive response rate monitor that enables instructors to review student submission rates.

Use this article to learn more about the Response Rate Monitor, or watch this Response Rate Monitor Overview video.

In this article:

• Logging into Explorance Blue
• Using the Response Rate Dashboard
  • Overall Response Status
  • Subject Progress and Performance Chart
  • Course Subjects
  • Response Analytics

Logging into Explorance Blue

1. Go to srt.umn.edu/blue and log in using your University of Minnesota Internet ID and password.
2. Select Response Rate on the left-hand side of your homepage.
   
3. Use the Response Rate Dashboard to review student response rates.
   

Using the Response Rate Dashboard 

The Response Rate Dashboard provides charts and graphs using data collected about student response rates. Review the options below to understand response rates.

Overall Response Status

The Overall Response Status pie chart provides a quick visual overview of your response rates for the semester in real-time. Use the pie chart to see a snapshot of real-time response rates of your courses.

• Note: Actual response rates may differ depending on whether data collection has started for your course.

The Overall Response Status pie chart shows the percentage of SRTs that are:

• Not ready: SRT submission period has not opened
• Not completed: SRTs that are open, but have not been started 
• In progress: SRTs that have been started but not submitted
• Completed: SRTs that have been completed
• Expired: SRTs that were not completed or submitted before the submission period closed

Use filters to review specific response rates. 

• Example filter: Completed and Expired percentages for Fall 2020. In progress, not completed, and not ready, are not applicable as the semester has ended.

Subject Progress and Performance Chart

The Subject Progress and Performance chart shows how far along courses are in their evaluation period, and within those evaluation time periods, how many subjects fall into various categories.

• Number of Subjects: Graph's Y-axis; represents the number of courses being tracked.
• Evaluation Period: X-axis; displays percentages from <25% of the data collection period up to 100% (data collection has closed)

• Example Graph: An SRT Department Contact viewing results after most courses are complete (100% Evaluation Period) but there are several courses still open for data collection.

Course Subjects

The Subjects section lists courses you can view or have access to. By default, the Subjects list is filtered by Category (academic year) and SubCategory (semester). 

Use this section for large-scale export of response rates. You can use multiple filters to sort data.

1. Use the Group By dropdown menu to filter results by:
   • Subject: Course designator
     • Ex. PSY
   • Catalog Nbr: Course number
     • Ex. 1001
   • Institution_Descr: The University of Minnesota campus designator
   • Acad_Group_Desc: Department group
     • Ex. Institute of Technology
   • Acad_Org_Desc: Department
     • Ex. Psychology 
2. Click the Excel button to download a copy of the desired data into an Excel spreadsheet.
   

Response Analytics

The Response Analytics graphs track additional details of student responses for courses you have access to. You can analyze which days and times your students are most likely to complete SRTs and plan your reminders accordingly.

Use the Response Analytics graphs to inform when to send your own reminders to encourage students to complete ratings, supplementing those sent automatically by the Explorance Blue system.

• Note: Actual response rates may differ depending on whether data collection has started.
  

Progression details

Notifications: Purple dotted line shows when a system-generated notification was sent to students

Response Count: Green solid line shows completed SRTs 

Peak Hours Graph

Track Response Count using peak hours (time of day) for SRT completion for the courses being viewed.

Peak Days Graph

Track Response Count using peak days of the week for SRT completion.

Note: Peak days may vary depending on when students receive invitations or reminders to complete their ratings.

Channels Pie Chart

The Channels pie chart provides analytics into how your students are accessing their SRTs. This can help guide you in how you might best contact students to encourage them to participate. In the example shown below, most students reach their SRTs via Canvas. This suggests that an announcement in Canvas could be more effective than email.

The Channels pie chart shows 5 categories:

• LMS: Students accessing their SRT link through their individual Canvas course site 
• Dashboard: Students accessing their SRT directly through their dashboard on the Blue platform, reached one of two ways:
  • Typing http://srt.umn.edu/blue into their browser
  • The final page of an SRT they have just completed includes a link to the dashboard, where they will see SRTs that are open for data collection for their courses
• Email: Students accessing their SRT through Blue system generated email invitations and reminders
• Not Captured: No data on the students access point to the SRT is available
• Undetermined: The method of accessing the online SRT is undetermined 

Note: You can use the filter at the top of Response Analytics to filter to a given time period.