To use Student-Feedback you need to register. You can either register as student to give feedback or as faculty member to create and administrate courses. Feedback results are visible to both, students and faculty identically.

For registration you need to choose a unique username, which can be a nickname. The entire service is designed to be completely anonymous. We never ask for your real name and we do NOT show any name or nickname together with comments. However, we ask for your email-address to activat the account. This is just in case to trace back unlawful use of the service. To register as faculty for a certain university you need to use an email-address of that institution. Students may use any private email-address.

The password of your account will be saved encrypted. When you lost your password, we will send you a new one by email (Password forgotten). Choose your institution from the list provided. It includes all "Hochschulen" in Germany listed by the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz. For data-safety you will have only access to courses of the university you have registered for. Feedback-data of each course are additionally protected by password. No data will become public.

After accepting the terms of use (Terms) and pressing the submit-button you will receive an email with an activation link. Press on this link in your email program and your account will be ready to use. You can now log in.

If you cross "Keep me logged in" on the login-page we set a cookie in your browser that remembers the encrypted password and will log you in next time automatically. You may log out anytime and the cookie will be deleted. For quick access to give feedback in a course within seconds it is convenient to be logged in automatically.

After your first login you need to search your courses and add them into the list of your courses. Later you can select directly from your list without further searching. In the menu go to Courses and Search a Course. In the upper field type the discipline you are searching for (like medicine, mathematics, chemistry) or part of the course-title or the code-number like 123V45. Then select your course from the dropdown list. If you cannot find your course by title or discipline, your professor might have hidden it. In this case you need to type-in the exact code-number that you became together with the password.

In the second field type the password for this course, which you became from your professor. After pressing the button Add to My Courses you are ready to give feedback or look into the results, other students have given so far. Therefore go to Give Feedback or Results by using the buttons or menu.

When you have courses in your list My Courses you can give feedback. Use the menu to go to Feedback. Select the course from the dropdown-list and you will get sliders for each parameter, which is available for this course. Adjust the sliders on the continuous scales. Additionally you can write a comment if you like. In case, open the input-field by clicking on "write comment". Finally, submit your feedback by pressing the submit button.

The next feedback can be given earliest after 15 minutes. You should concentrate on the course not on your mobile-phone or tablet.

Comments are displayed anonymously just together with date and time. They are visible to students and the professor of your course. Comments can be very helpful for your professor, to interpret the feedback data. Let your professor know the good and bad sides of this course. Try to find adequate words to express a constructive criticism and avoid defamation. In case of serious defamation or other violation of personal rights the professor may delete single comments. Students can delete their own comments.

Go to the menu-item Comments or My Comments choose the appropriate course and period and identify the comment to be deleted. Remember or copy the date-time-stamp. Then go to the menu-item Delete a Comment, select the appropriate course, type in (or paste) date and time of the comment to be deleted in the displayed format, then press Search. The comment to be deleted is now displyed. Press Delete. Professors need to provide the administration-password of the course that they have chosen during creation of the course. If you have forgotten the administration-password look into the confirmation-email you received after creation.

For presentation of the evaluation results there are two types of graphs.

First, there is the statistical Distribution of all feedbacks given in a certain period. You can choose between last 2 hour, day, week, month, semester or display all data. This type of presentation shows, how different feedbacks are distributed over the scale. The data are accumulated over all participating students in the chosen period.

Second, there is a presentation as Change over Time. In this type of graph the average feedback is displayed as function of time. The circles represent the arithmetic average of feedbacks given in a short period. The area of the circle is proportional to the number of feedbacks given within this short period. Therefore the size of the circles is proportional to the statistical weight this data-point deserves.

Finally, you find a list of all comments starting with the newest.

To set up a new course you need to be logged in as faculty member. Go to menu-item Create a Course. There are a number of input-fields which need to be filled out. First is the title of your course. Try to find a unique expression don't call it simply "exercises" or something like that. Next are the parameter you want to get feedback for from the students. You may use one to maximal five parameter. This tool should not replace the old fashioned evaluation forms with tens of questions you need half an hour to fill out. This tool is intended to give feedback in seconds without loosing attention in the course. Keep this in mind and choose here only the most important and valuable parameter. Use clear formulations to define the scale by naming the extrema. The scale is a continuous scale with intent to make the decision easier to slide the slider to an appropriate position. We assume that students use a linear scale between the extrema, which are defined verbally. Reflect a moment the words you use.

Additionally you provide an abbreviation of the title and the discipline your course belongs to. The latter is used to filter the search results, when students are searching for your course. The student-password you set here will be given to the students that they can open this course. The administration-password is for your use only. It is an additional protection of your course-adminstration. Keep it secret, but don't loose it. Finally you can decide if students are allowed to write comments. You may change this setting later. You can hide a course from a search by title or discipline. If the last tick mark is not set, the course can be found only by the code number. When everything is filled in submit it. Please do not produce test-versions, which might pop up in the search results of the students making things unclear. Better than test-versions is to modify the course parameter later. Some of them can be changed only as long as no feedbacks have been given (see next section).

You may want to change course-parameter after creation of the course. Do this if possible before you give the password to the students. You can change everything as long as no feedback has been sent. Later you cannot change title, used parameter and scales. You may add parameter, if you have used less than five parameter so far. You may change the settings with respect to comments and search-visibility. Additionally you find now the option to set the course to inactive. This means that no feedback can be given, no results can be seen and it cannot be found by search. The only one that can find and reactivate the course are you.

To provide maximal possible transparency you can have a look into the account data we have saved about you. Go to the menu-item My Account to see the data in two tables. The first table contains the login data username, email, function and your university. The password is encrypted and can not be reconstructed from our database.

For students the second table shows all courses they have or have had access to. Each line contains codenumber, title, the last date of feedback you gave and a tick mark if you have the course still in your list or a cross when you have deleted it from your list. If you never gave feedback the date represents the date of first access.

For faculty members the second table shows all courses they have created. Each line contains codenumber, title, the student password, the total number of all feedbacks and comments given so far and finally is shown, if the course is still open for feedback or set to inactive.

Privacy is very important in this field and in consequence it is very important to us. Student-Feedback is designed to be double protected by passwords. Nothing becomes public. We ask for as few as possible data about you. Data we have saved are necessary to handle everything safely and to protect the platform against misuse. Feedback-data are only visible to people, who have access to the student-password of a certain course. The platform itself can be accessed only with registration including email verification. Courses can be created only by faculty-user with email from the specific institution. All data are located in highly secure data centers in Europe (Frankfurt, Strasbourg) with daily backup. German data protection law applies. For full information see Privacy.