Course evaluations are open!
Fall 2024 deadlines:
- December 4 (condensed evaluation period)
- December 21 (default evaluation period)
Fall 2024 deadlines:
All courses with five (5) or more students are evaluated using Mercury. The feedback you obtain from your students through Mercury course evaluations is one input to an ongoing reflective process that you should engage in to improve your teaching and future offerings of courses.
This page contains resources for instructors on optional and required end-of-course evaluations, including strategies to encourage student participation and guidelines to help you interpret your course evaluation results.
You may add up to three (3) questions to your course evaluation questionnaire.
Granting permission to make your course evaluation results available to students can motivate students to complete their evaluations. Learn more!
Manuals are available to help you navigate your Mercury page.
We are not able to delete course evaluation responses based on the inference of an error.
Comments that are determined to be hateful or discriminatory on the basis of gender, sexual identity, race, ethnicity or religion call into question the individual's ability to fairly assess an instructor’s teaching. These comments are antithetical to the principles of equity and inclusivity. They are further unhelpful to an instructor in reviewing and improving their own teaching abilities and strategies, or to that instructor's unit head in supporting their pedagogical development.
Any instructor who receives comments that they believe to meet the characteristics described above may contact angela.campbell [at] mcgill.ca (Angela Campbell) (Associate Provost (Equity & Academic Policies) (APEAP)) to disclose the matter, which shall be treated in confidence. The APEAP and the SSMU Equity Commissioner will assess the anonymized remarks to determine whether these merit deletion of the response. If this is found to be the case, the response in its entirety (numerical responses and comments) will be deleted.
This request can be made at any time and for any Mercury evaluations received during an instructor's time at McGill.
The Senate Policy on End-of-Course Evaluations defines "course instructors" as "members of the academic staff responsible for a Course." Facilitating one or several class sessions is not considered responsibility for a course; therefore, guest instructors should not be evaluated as "course instructors" using Mercury.
The Mercury system cannot be used for courses where fewer than 5 students are enrolled. The Senate Policy on End-of-Course Evaluations states that “7.1: All course evaluation results shall be anonymous.” When so few students are enrolled in a course, it is difficult to respect their anonymity. Also, with so few responses, the statistical analyses performed automatically are not appropriate.
However, instructors are still encouraged to get feedback from students using alternative survey tools, such as ,, or Polling @ McGill. Instructors should make sure to ensure that the data collection tools are set for anonymous submissions. Note that an important aspect of the Mercury system is that responses officially on record in the system can be accessed by academic unit heads, as well as the course instructors. Responses collected with alternative tools are unofficial, are not systematically reported, and are only available to course instructors.
Instructors can request a one-on-one consultation to learn more about how to use alternative survey tools.
Course evaluation results, both numerical ratings and comments, belong to the course instructor. Therefore, you can share your results as you please, such as on your website, in publications, or at conferences. If your course is co-taught, students’ feedback about the course belongs to all course instructors teaching that course. As a professional courtesy, you should check with your co-instructor(s) before sharing results from co-taught courses.
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