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Learning & Teaching Innovation

Student Experience of Learning (SEL)

The SEL survey, formerly the Course Experience Survey (CES), is a university-wide tool used to gather student feedback on courses at UVic. Administered by LTI, SEL results support instructor reflection and development, departmental practices and course delivery, and institutional analysis. Instructors are responsible for how and when to communicate about the survey in their courses, including whether to encourage participation or set aside class time.

Why it matters

The SEL is more than anonymous feedback offered at the end of each term. It is how students influence what happens in the classroom. Student input can help improve teaching approaches, refine course design and guide decisions around curriculum.

Frequently asked questions

 For students

Links to your SEL surveys will be emailed to you. In most courses, your instructor will show you in class how to access the SEL on your laptop, tablet or smart phone and will leave the class temporarily to give you the opportunity to complete the survey online during class time. In some courses you may be directed to complete the surveys outside of class. If you are in an online class the SEL link will also be delivered to you by email.

The email will be sent to your preferred email. Please ensure that your preferred email address in Online Tools is accurate.

If you have not received an email you can go directly to your online SEL dashboard. Once you sign in with your UVic Netlink ID you will be direct to your open evaluations.

You can log in to your SEL dashboard during the time your survey is open to you and complete all the surveys that are available for you to complete. Every course is available for a certain time period (usually the last 1/6th of the course).

First, make sure that your preferred email address in Online Tools is an address you are actively monitoring.

Next, check your safe senders list to ensure that the SEL email address in your email system isn't being flagged as spam.

Yes, as long as the SEL is open the online system will allow you to do some of the survey, save it and go back to it later or complete it and make adjustments later.

If you spend 15 minutes or longer on any one question, the survey will time out. If it does time out it will only save the bulleted responses you made and not the typed responses you did in the survey.

You can write your responses in a Word (or equivalent) document and then copy and paste your answer into the survey. This is a good idea to do in case the system happens to time out on you after 15 minutes.

The survey invitation is generally emailed out in the last 1/6th of the class for full-term courses. You will have until 11:59 PM on the last day before the exam period to complete the survey. During the Summer term your dates may change if your instructor has asked for an adjustment to accommodate a final exam on the last day of class. In all cases, your SEL dashboard will show when each survey closes.

Yes. Instructors receive only summary reports with the written statements and only after grades have been submitted. The summary reports do not include any identifying student information. Even in small classes there will no longer be hand written comments. In this sense students can have great confidence their answers are confidential since their handwriting can no longer be recognized.

From a purely technical perspective, the SEL system does maintain a linkage within the survey database, which enables automatic inclusion/exclusion of responses based on course enrolment. But because we do not have any people handling individual student surveys, the survey results are effectively anonymous. That is, no instructors, deans, chairs or departmental academic staff has the ability to access individual student surveys. A small number of system administrators do theoretically have the ability to access individual student surveys. However this is strictly forbidden, just as it is forbidden for them to view any confidential information they are entrusted with. Employees in these roles are entrusted with a wide variety of highly confidential information such as personnel records. These employees sign a confidentiality agreement with the university before being hired.

 For instructors

In some circumstances exceptions may be made:
  • during the summer session when the final exam is administered before the last day of class as listed in Banner
  • when student access to the SEL is difficult and therefore the survey dates should be adjusted to enable completion of the survey
  • courses are required but do not have credits associated with them in Banner and are lacking components usually associated with the SEL

If you would like to improve your survey response rates, please contact us at asklti@uvic.ca for guidance on effective strategies.

Instructor reports can be accessed at any time by going to your SEL dashboard and signing in using your secure UVic NetLink ID. When you are not teaching, please be aware that your access status will change. If you are denied access please contact selhelp@uvic.ca. Chair/Director/Dean reports can only be accessed through Microsoft Teams once permission has been provisioned via departmental SEL Admins.

Further resources