Utterly disappointed with Course Evaluation Support (QClassroom)

Hello ​@astrong ,

First, let me apologize for the less than stellar experience you’ve experienced thus far with the Qualtrics Course Evaluations product particularly during this crucial time for university administrators and faculty. I want to let you know that I’ve internally escalated this issue and will reach out via email to follow up. 

Alonso, I appreciate your response. I look forward to your email. We are really scrambling over here. This particular issue has occurred every year at least once and it is always a painful and protracted experience trying to get help. We have reached out to other institutions in our region and many reached out right away to say they have had similar experiences. 

Alonso, 

The crisis has been averted. However, what we can learn from this experience is considerable. In the end it turns out the character limit for a column was exceeded in one course section. ONE row caused a catastrophic failure that could have ruined our relationship with our Faculty and our relationship with Qualtrics. This file was imported via SFLE without issue. However, the error occurred when the automated distribution tried to run. This is something we could have fixed quickly and easily if the system error messages contained any useful information at all. The error we got was “transactionid set as non-null is null”. This had nothing to do with the actual problem. We wouldn’t have had to submit a ticket and escalate things like we did if the error messages in the system were of any use whatsoever. This really needs to be addressed. Additionally, there is no Course Evaluation option in the Support Hub. This needs to be remedied as well. 

Thanks again for your quick response. I hope you will consider sharing the issues I have flagged here.

Hi ​@astrong,

I was happy to help find a solution to support your faculty during this critical time in the academic year. I shared the ideas you brought up here with the Evolve team, who oversee product feature suggestions for Qualtrics. Although there is currently no specific category for "Qualtrics Course Evaluations," they suggest submitting your idea via this flow: "Qualtrics Platform" -> "Unknown" product area & tag.

Product ideas are more likely to be actioned if they receive a lot of support ("votes"), so I suggest gathering support from your colleagues, other higher ed administrators in your region, or even members in the Higher Ed group of the XM Community to get this feature prioritized and increase the likelihood of its implementation.

Again, I apologize for the stress this issue caused, and feel free to DM me for further help!

Amber,
I too have never experienced a level of disappointment and frustration with not only the support side of a product/service as I have with Qualtrics Course Evaluations (formerly QClassroom), but with the level of functionality of the course evaluations platform. We are on our third year of using this platform and we too are already considering other products going forward.

First, having worked with the Qualtrics surveys platform, I would have hoped that the course evaluations platform was as user-friendly. However, we have found the process of course evaluation implementation, data uploads, and general course maintenance to be quite cumbersome for the following reasons:

1. The course evaluations platform requires a separate data upload to simply add existing students to a course, which we could do very easily in our previous platform.
2. The platform also requires a separate data upload to simply add, delete, or change faculty from a course, which we could do very easily in our previous platform.
3. The dashboards were cumbersome to create based on the complexity of our course evaluation questions and required us to develop 25 separate pages in our Dashboard. This is very confusing to faculty. Previously, we only had one report which automatically tailored itself to the questions asked.
4. We have had to devise out-of-platform processes to email faculty in regard to their course evaluations, reminders, etc. We previously were able to complete that process within our old platform. It doesn't seem that Qualtrics has an easy process for setting up automated emails to faculty.
5. We are very disappointed with the support provided for Qualtrics course evaluations. There seems to be no live support, and it must be done via email. In addition, I feel that when I contact support, I have already exhausted their suggestions on my own and seem to understand the platform better then they do.

I have attempted to contact our account representative, Brian Carter, several times to discuss these issues with no reply. I have also contacted support in an attempt to reach someone else, also to no avail.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to help, I would appreciate hearing from someone at Qualtrics or colleagues having similar issues.

Hi Lisa,

So sorry this has been the experience for you so far. I’ve internally escalated your issue and will do my best to get someone from your account team to reach out as well. 

Alonso,
I certainly hope you have more luck with getting a response from the account team than I have!

Hi Lisa,

I got a response from the support team and your account rep. They will be in touch with you shortly via email. If you need any further assistance, feel free to DM and I’d be happy to assist!

Thank you, Alonso. I have heard from them.