Student Feedback Questionnaire (SFQ) is used to collect feedback from students about their learning experience in courses they have taken.

Doing SFQs is actually a student's right and privilege. Hence, it is highly recommended that students should take advantage of this right and fill out the SFQ to let the University knows what they think about their courses. Only students can tell the University how effective a course is for their learning.

Responses from students in the same section are mixed in a pool and no personal information are attached to the data. Thus, an instructor will not be able to find out how a student rated or commented him or her. He or she only has access to the feedback from the class as a whole.

Instructors should be able to find out from Canvas what SFQs are collecting or about to collect for the courses they teach.

Under the current university regulation, each SFQ survey should be conducted prior to the final examination. This is to prevent the SFQ survey result from being affected by the difficulty level of the examination.

Starting from Fall 2003, students who were found cheating or plagiarizing, the instructor can make a request to exclude the student from participating in the evaluation of the section where the said dishonest behavior took place. This is intended to protect the instructor from retaliation by students accused of cheating and plagiarizing. All such requests should be made to SEA using a standard form on or before week 11. Late requests may not be entertained, especially when the student concerned has already completed and submitted the SFQ.

Students can access to SFQ via different means:

1. Login Canvas ^Note and go to "SFQ" section;
2. Install HKUST iLearn app (iOS / Android) on your smartphone / tablets and run the app.
3. Access SFQ survey system using mobile devices.

Note: The Canvas Student App by Instructure does not include SFQ section, so students cannot complete SFQs via this app.

Instructors can check the most updated response rates of the active SFQ surveys for their courses at SFQ survey system.

This may be because the course concerned lasted for only one week. Students are usually given at least one week to submit their evaluations of a course. In this unusual circumstance, the survey period is usually set by the department offering the course. Once the survey period is set, the SFQ survey system will automatically send emails to remind students once every 3 days to encourage them to complete the survey.

If students want to edit their survey response during survey period, they can go to SFQ survey system, click on the survey to edit the responses and re-submit the survey. However, if the survey is closed, the data from all students of that course will enter a data pool and be saved anonymously. Hence, it is not possible to find out the survey response students wrongly submitted. If students would like to make additional comments for the courses, they can consider sending the comments to the department concerned or send to SEA at sfq.survey@ust.hk.

Since the SFQ survey is a large scale operation involving over 2000 sections in Fall or Spring term, allowing late submissions will create significant delay in releasing SFQ survey results. Thus, no late-submission will be accepted. However, students may consider sending their comments about the course to the department directly or to SEA, which will then forward the comments to the department anonymously.

Yes, instructors can conduct in-class SFQ to encourage students' response. For more details, please click here.

No, only students need mobile devices (laptops, tablets or smart phones) to submit their responses.

Instructor can ask student to complete SFQ at https://survey.ust.hk/hkust/ using a mobile browser.

The data are stored in a database maintained by ITSC. Details reports are sent to teaching personnel and department heads. A summary SFQ report is made available to students through SFQ Survey Results.

SFQ reports which contain aggregate statistics (i.e. department, school and university level) will generally be available about 1.5 months after the deadline for submission of course grades. However, a provisional report with no aggregate statistics can be generated by the authorized departmental administrative staff after the survey is completed. Release of both the provisional and official reports to the instructor should be made only if he or she has submitted all the final course grades.

No, they have to submit all the final grades before the SFQ report is released to them.

Instructors should be able to find their past SFQ survey reports (or formerly course evaluation reports) through HKUST Canvas.