ICES Online Frequently Asked Questions, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to the ICES Online Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).


We hope you find the following pages useful as you become acquainted with the ICES Online system. What follows is a series of the most commonly asked questions about ICES Online. Choose those that are of interest to you, skip those that are not. ICES Online is administered through the Measurement and Evaluation (ME) in the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). So, if you have any questions that are not addressed here, contact us at ices@illinois.edu or call 333-3490. We hope you find these pages useful. We wish you the best of luck in your teaching experiences at the university!

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What is ICES Online?
ICES Online is our online equivalent of ICES (Instructor and Course Evaluation System). ICES Online is a secure web-based system.
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How can I use ICES Online?
Faculty can sign-up for ICES Online by contacting our office at 333-3490 or e-mailing ices@illinois.edu. We send an e-mail to UIUC faculty teaching online courses each semester to invite them to utilize ICES Online for their online course. (Sometimes our list is not comprehensive so we cannot guarantee that all faculty teaching online will receive an invitational e-mail.) If you are teaching a traditional face-to-face course and want to use ICES Online, you need to contact our office by mid-semester so we can set-up your course. We are in the pilot phase now, but eventually may replace the entire paper ICES with ICES Online.
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Is the ICES Online system secure?
We use a variety of measures to ensure confidentiality and security of the system. Students, faculty, and administrators must log on with their UIUC Net IDs and passwords to access the system. This is done using the University's Bluestem authentication software. Both the software and data are housed on secure servers.
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What does the ICES Online interface look like?
Here is a screenshot of ICES Online:
sample page
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How is ICES Online different than ICES?
ICES Online is web-based. Both systems will count as your "official" UIUC student evaluation of teaching. Results of both systems will show up on Longitudinal Profiles and allow you to qualify for the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent. The first two global items are identical in both systems, but ICES Online adds a third global item related to amount learned in the course. The three items are:

  1. Rate the instructor's overall teaching effectiveness.
  2. Rate the overall quality of this course.
  3. How much have you learned in this course?

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Can I still qualify for the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent if I use ICES Online?
Yes, your ICES Online scores will allow you to qualify for the List just as your paper ICES scores would. The same criteria are used for both ratings systems.
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Will my ICES Online results show up on ICES Longitudinal Profiles?
Yes, your two global items on ICES Online are the same as the two global items on ICES. These scores will be stored in our master database and will be placed on Longitudinal Profiles along with your ICES scores. Your ICES Online means will be displayed, but you will not receive the "norm comparative label" (Hi, Hi-Avg, Avg, Low-Avg, Low) with your ICES Online ratings until we have sufficient data in the system.
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How long are ICES Online evaluations available to students to complete?
For full length 16-week courses, the final evaluation form is available for 21 days (2 weeks before finals and the week of final exams). This time period is shorter for non-traditional courses.
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How do I view results of my ICES Online evaluations?
ICES Online results are viewable over the web as soon as the deadline for grades to be turned in has passed (typically a few days after final exams). Faculty can log on to the ICES Online system and view their full evaluation results. Department administrators can also view the results if the faculty member gives permission in ICES Online. No paper results are mailed to faculty or administrators. Both parties will be e-mailed when results are available.
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Are the results easier to interpret than paper ICES?
We think so! We have tried to make the ICES Online results very user-friendly. We have graphs for each item and also allow faculty to download results so more complicated analysis can be done.
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How many items can I have on an ICES Online evaluation form?
ICES Online allows 26 rated items and 6 open-ended items. Faculty can write their own open-ended items. Faculty are not allowed to write any rated items, but we are continually expanding the item pool and welcome suggestions for new items.
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Are department core items carried over from ICES to ICES Online?
Yes. Note that the dept cores are not automatically loaded onto your form. If your department has a core(s), they will be displayed and you'll need to add them by clicking on the core you want.
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How will my students be notified about ICES Online?
The system will send your students an e-mail when an evaluation form is available for them to complete. They will also receive 2 reminder e-mails before the system closes the evaluation form. We encourage you to also remind your students to complete the ICES Online course evaluation. It would be beneficial to explain why the feedback is valued and how the course has changed based on past ICES feedback.
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Can I use ICES Online for mid-semester feedback?
No. We want to use ICES Online only for the official end-of-course evaluation. We value and encourage mid-semester feedback, but do not want to confuse students be offering ICES Online for both informal and formal feedback.
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If I use ICES Online, will it store my old forms for use in the future?
Yes, ICES Online will store your evaluation forms so you can recall them for another semester. ICES Online will also store your evaluation results for later viewing.
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What if my department orders the online forms for us ("centrally prepared")--do I do anything?
In ICES Online, some departments create the online evaluation forms for their instructors. If this is your situation, then you'll receive an e-mail from ICES Online when your course is loaded indicating that your dept is ordering forms for you. You don't need to do anything. You can still log into ICES Online and see the evaluation form your dept created, but you cannot alter the form. If you have special requests, please see your dept so they can adjust the online questions, release of results, etc.
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If I release results to my department, what results do they get?
If instructors release results of ICES Online to their department, then dept administrators will receive the results of the three global items plus the department core items (if there is a dept core set of items). Departments DO NOT get results of the open-ended items. Those are intended only for the individual instructor. Also, if extra individual items are added by an instructor, those results DO NOT go back to the department either.
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Students need to enter their Net ID and password to fill out forms--is that ever reported back to instructors or departments?
No. We do require students to log in with their University Net ID and password (to authenticate that they are enrolled students and haven't completed an evaluation form already), but their identities (names, Net IDs, UINs, etc) are not reported back to instructors or departments. In fact, we feel the new system is potentially MORE confidential than the old paper ICES since student comments are now typed rather than hand written.
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