To ensure that every course at WU can be evaluated, the cycle is divided into Bachelor and Master programs. Some courses are only offered annually. To ensure that these are also taken into account, an evaluation cycle lasts two semesters. Of course, evaluations can be carried out optionally at any time.

Evaluation cycle:

• Academic year 2023/24: Master program courses

• Academic year 2024/25: Bachelor program courses

• Academic year 2025/26: Master program courses

• Academic year 2026/27: Bachelor program courses

The results will be available after completing the online evaluation. For paper&pencil evaluations, the questionnaires are scanned and digitalized in the Evaluation and Quality Enhancement department. Due to this, the results will be available a few working days after the evaluation has been completed. Course instructors can choose from various publication options. Lecturers can find the results online and share them with WU students.
We recommend discussing the results with students during the course to create a feedback culture. The results should also be used to further develop and improve the quality of the courses. Further information on how to use the results can be found here (Only in German).

In addition to course evaluation, feedback culture is an important topic for teaching and learning at WU. For quick, anonymous and direct feedback in your course, you can use several online question types. For more information and tips on how feedback can be used in teaching, please visit WU's Teaching & Learning Academy (Only in German). Information on the technical use of Fast Feedback is described in the Canvas WU Guide.

Course evaluations are obligatory according to paragraph 14 of the Austrian Universities Law 2002 ("Universitätsgesetz 2002" - UG 2002) and the "Evaluation Guidelines" outlined in Annex 3 of the statutes of WU.

If a course is scheduled for mandatory evaluation as part of the evaluation cycle, lecturers will be informed by email at the beginning of the respective semester.. A voluntary course evaluation is always possible, even when the course is not required to perform a course evaluation.

The requirements for evaluations and feedback in teaching have changed significantly in recent years. Both the way in which feedback is given and how it is handled is different from when the evaluation system was introduced since the end of the 1990s. For example, students are used to giving quick feedback via social media with high frequency. Teachers use good evaluation results much more often for applications in the education sector than before. Feedback and reports should therefore now be processed and made available more quickly at the WU in line with the changed feedback culture. In addition, technological requirements have also changed. The upcoming technological upgrade was primarily used to better adapt the platform to the needs of the various stakeholders.

Course evaluations are an essential part of quality analysis on the course level at WU. Thus they are a valued part of WU's quality culture framework.

The students assessment of teaching quality in courses provides useful insights who students perceive teachers and their teaching efforts. This feedback enables teachers to further develop their courses and didactic skills.

The course evaluation would also like to involve other institutional levels in the feedback culture. In order to support this, aggregated results will be made available within the framework of a reporting system for persons in charge. The reporting is intended to be the starting point for a dialogue on the further development of teaching and can help to make potential for improvement visible.