Distributing the evaluations

With the Question Set built and its report settings configured, you're ready to put it in front of students. In StudentSense you do this by running an Evaluation — a single outing of the Question Set against a set of Enrolments for one teaching period.

Create an Evaluation

On the Create evaluation screen, pick the Question Set under Questions, then give the Evaluation its own name and a short description.

This is the student-facing name — unlike the Question Set's internal label, the Evaluation name and description are what students see when they sign in. Because Question Sets are reusable, the same set powers this Evaluation and every future one — you're scheduling a run, not rebuilding the survey.

Set up the Evaluation

Creating the Evaluation opens its setup screen. From here you fill three cards — but only the first is required before collection can start.

Add enrolments (Required)

Upload the Enrolments for this run. This is the only step that must be done before the response window opens: it's what tells StudentSense which students evaluate which subjects.

Add enrolments gives you two ways in: upload a CSV (a downloadable template keeps the format right), or paste rows straight from a spreadsheet.

Add educators (Optional)

Link educators to their subjects so they can watch incremental response rates while the window is open, and use Present mode to invite students to respond live in class — a reliable way to lift completion. While this is optional to start the collection, it's necessary if you want educators to use Present mode in class — so it's highly recommended.

Add leaders & reporting structure (Optional)

Configure departments, levels, and leaders so results can be broken down across the university and the right people see the right reports. This is optional to start the collection and get student responses but is required to release reports to leaders later on.

Driving response rates with Present mode

The single most effective way to lift response rates is for educators to set aside a few minutes in class for students to respond there and then. StudentSense supports this with a per-subject Present mode: the educator displays a QR code for their own subject and watches completions climb on screen in real time.

For Present mode to be available to every educator, assign one or more educators to each subject — which is what Add educators does.

It works just like Add enrolments, with one column different: the third column is the Teacher email, not the student's.

Set the response window

Choose when the Evaluation opens and closes. The window is the period students can respond; it closes automatically on the end date, so there's nothing to switch off manually.

How students take part

There are no links to chase or passwords to manage. Thanks to SSO, each student signs in with their university account and sees exactly the subjects they're enrolled to evaluate, pre-configured for them. Each evaluation can be completed only once, by the named student — and because all questions are mandatory, every submission is complete.

StudentSense automatically sends announcement and reminder emails to the addresses you loaded, so a baseline of outreach happens without any effort from you. But the more channels you activate, the higher the completion rate — a survey students meet in several places is far more likely to be answered.

To add channels, click on the three dots and click Share instructions.

From there you can copy a QR code to drop onto slides or posters, or copy the evaluation link to send by email, post in chat rooms, or pin as an alert on your LMS.

Watch response rates as it runs

While the Evaluation window is open, you can watch momentum build in real time. There are no scores or colour bands here — those belong to the leader and educator reports; this view is purely about uptake. Two things tell you whether to push harder, and where:

• A day-by-day waterfall of total completions, showing how responses are accumulating across the window.
• An entry-points breakdown showing which channel each student used to reach the survey — so you can see which of your channels are actually working.

If Educator present is showing signs of success, lean further on Present mode; if a channel is flat, try another option for engaging students.