(Revised March 2024) 

1. BLUE is currently the only official evaluation system in use at JMU.
2. Academic Departments are required to use the Blue System for all courses they offer, whether online, in-seat, labs, field experiences, study abroad, or other course types.
3. Course evaluations will include questions created by academic departments and any questions individual faculty members want to add to their course evaluations. As of Spring, 2024, they do not include questions at the college or university level.
4. Departments and faculty are encouraged, but not required, to select from a pre-developed bank of questions available on this website for evaluation questionnaire changes and/or updates.
5. Ratings questions in evaluations will use a 5-point Likert scale where 5 is the greatest (or most positive) value and 1 is the least (or most negative) value. Example:  5=Strongly Agree while 1=Strongly Disagree.  Exceptions are considered on a per-department basis.
6. Standard Evaluation periods use the following protocols:
   Instructor evaluation tasks will open one to two weeks ahead of evaluations opening to students, depending on the length of the course.  These tasks include adding questions beyond their department’s questionnaire and changing the date / time to one more suitable to the class schedule.  (Refer to the Instructor User’s Guide.)
   b.  Fall and Spring full-semester course evaluations open to students ten days to two weeks prior to the start of exams and will close at 11:59 pm on the day before exams begin.
   c.  Block and summer course evaluations will remain open for one week (more or less), closing at 11:59 pm on the next to last day of class.
   d.  One- and two-week session course evaluations open at noon either 24 or 48 hours before the last day of class, and will close at noon on the last day.  Length of availability depends on the length of the course.
   EXCEPTIONS:  Faculty may adjust the date / time of any evaluation to better suit the class schedule, as long as those dates fall between the start of the evaluation cycle and the last day of class for the session or term.
7. The University Provost, others under the Provost (vice provosts, associate provosts, associate vice provosts), and College Deans will not have access to any individual instructor data without going through the Instructor’s Academic Unit Head. Requests could include considerations for National or International awards or criminal investigations.  Otherwise, data for these entities are limited to aggregated quantitative only, with no access to qualitative (comments) data.
8. Data from questions added to evaluations by individual faculty during the question personalization process are excluded from their Academic Unit Head’s copy of an individual instructor report. Faculty have the option to share the data with their Unit Head, but are not required to do so.
9. Evaluation reports are generated for all courses, regardless of class size.
   Note:  For low- (3 or fewer) and single-enrollment courses with multiple sections per instructor (such as student teaching, music studio, independent guidance on research), sections per instructor can be combined to meet minimum response thresholds for reports.  Contact the EvaluationsTeam for more information.
10. Any major changes to Guiding Principles will be reviewed by the Academic Council and/or the Provost’s Leadership Team as necessary.