FAQs

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Students

Instructors

Staff

All Users

• Q. Why am I getting a 404-"resource not available" error when I log in?
  A. You likely made a bookmark to the site after a previous log in, and then tried to use the bookmark. Since the bookmark was made from inside the site, it won't work with a fresh log in. Instead, bookmark http://www.hawaii.edu/ecafe and use that link to access the site.

Students

• Q. Can my answers be traced back to me?
  A. No. At no time do we associate you with your answers. All answers are completely anonymous.
• Q. I submitted my survey before I was done, or I made a mistake. Can I redo it?
  A. No. Since we don't associate you with your responses, we have no way to know which evaluation is yours in order to reset it.
• Q. Where can I see published results?
  A. Instructors can voluntarily publish their results for all to see. Go to http://www.hawaii.edu/ecafe and click on the "View Published Surveys" button to see the results.
• Q. When do instructors get to see the results?
  A. The Thursday after grades are due.
• Q. I made a mistake when I submitted my survey, can I redo it?
  A. Once a survey is submitted, it is stored completely independently of your identifying information. We do this so the surveys will be completely anonymous, but it has the unfortunate side affect that we can't determine which survey is yours in order to fix a mistake. You may want to email your instructor about it so they have a record proving that those results were erroneous.
• Q. What accomodations are there for students with disabilities?
  A. Both the public student computer labs at Hamilton and Sinclair libraries that ITS runs have special computers available for students with disabilities. In addition, students can go to Ann Ito's office and counselors there are able to log in for the students and help the students with the evaluations.
• Q. What if I don't have a computer?
  A. For students who do not have personal computers, students can participate using the public computer labs at both Hamilton & Sinclair libraries. Students can also use the computers at public libraries if they have a library card. Finally, students can participate at Internet Cafes and other Internet connected facilities.

Instructor

• Q. Is my Organization (campus, college, division, department, or subject) participating?
  A. : View list of organizations that have signed up.
• Q. Can I use eCAFE if my organization is not participating?
  A. Yes! Please log in during the Instructor Edit period (listed on the front page) to enable and setup your evaluations.
• Q. Where can I see the list of questions available for selection?
  A. View a list of all questions available.
• Q. Why are we doing electronic surveys?
  A. eCafe is an attempt to replace the paper-based evaluation system. At UH Manoa the machine that processed the paper surveys were old and there are/were no parts available for it. Some of the other campuses may still offer a paper-based system. Please contact your campus eCafe coordinator for additional information.
• Q. What does it mean to publish?
  A. Publishing is agreeing to display the aggregated results of a survey on a public site. After the student survey period closes, you will be able to view your results and decide if you want to publish them or not. If you choose to publish, you will be shown what will be posted, and you will have a chance to omit individual responses to open-ended questions before submitting the results for publishing. You will also be able to revoke your decision at any time. To see what published results look like, go to http://www.hawaii.edu/ecafe and click on the "View Published Surveys." Note that if you do not want to publish, there is nothing you need to do, by default, results are not published. Results are only published through an explicit action that would have to be taken by you.
• Q. What happens if I select "I would like to publish this survey result?"
  A. This is declaring your intent to make your results public at the end of the semester. If you select "Yes," the eCAFE system will let your students know that you plan to make the results public. This gives them an incentive to participate. Declaring your intent to publish does not mean that you are forced to publish, or that publishing your results will happen automatically. You will still need to log in during the results period and click a "Publish" button before it actually takes place. Even if you select "No," you can still publish the results later if you choose to do so. Note that if you do not want to publish, there is nothing you need to do, by default, results are not published. Results are only published through an explicit action that would have to be taken by you.
• Q. How is the mean computed?
  A. The mean is computed by assigning values to each answer and taking the average of those values. For example, let's say there's a multiple choice question with possible answers of Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree. Strongly Agree is assigned a value of 5 and Strongly Disagree is assigned a value of 1. If six students responded with three students answering Strongly Agree, two answering Agree, and one answering Neutral, the math would look like this: ((3*5)+(2*4)+(1*3))/6. = 15+8+3/6 = 26/6 = 4.33. We round off the mean at two digits after the decimal.
• Q. What does "Disable Survey" or "Enable Survey" mean?
  A. If your department has determined that your participation is voluntary, you will see one of these buttons next to each of your surveys. These allow you to decide if you want to present the survey to your students. If the survey is enabled, the students will receive an email pointing them to the survey when the student survey period opens. If the survey is disabled, no email will be sent and the survey will not be given to anyone.
• Q. I don't have a "Disable" button, what's up?
  A. Some departments elect to make the surveys mandatory. If that's the case, you will not see the Disable or Enable buttons.
• Q. When is the survey open for students to take?
  A. Students can take the survey in the three weeks before finals, with the last day being the Friday before finals week.
• Q. Why is the student open period when it is? Why isn't it after the semester ends, or for a shorter or longer period?
  A. During several semesters of pilot tests, we tried different time frames for the student open period and gathered feedback from the instructors and tracked the student participation rates. The general consensus of the instructors, along with the best participation rates, came down to the current time frame.
• Q. When do I get to see the results?
  A. One week after grades are due.
• Q. Does anyone get to see my results?
  A. Only if you publish them or explicitly grant an individual access through the system.
• Q. How do I find out how many students have completed the survey during the student open period?
  A. When you log in, immediately under each class listing, you'll see text in italics that reads something like this: "33 enrolled, 0 completed, 0 opted-out." You will also get periodic emails from us with the up to date completion rates.
• Q. How do I let someone see my results?
  A. There are three ways to share your results:
  • Publish your results. This makes your results publically available.
  • Email your results to an individual. This is done via the "Email Results" button next to each of your past results.
  • Set an individual to have indefinite access to all your results. This is done via the "Share results" button at the top of the Past Results section. This priviledge can be revoked by you at any time.
• Q. Can you tell me which students did my survey?
  A. No, we can't. The issue is student privacy. Let's say that you have a class of 5 students, 2 of whom do the survey thinking that the class has enough people that you won't be able to tell who did it, but then we send you a list of the two who did the survey. At that point, it becomes much easier to figure out which response belongs to which student.

  The most common question we get from students is "Are my survey responses anonymous." We assure them that they are. If we start telling instructors who did the surveys, then we have to put an asterisk next to our statement of anonymity, and that might be enough to scare them away from doing their surveys.

  An alternative method is that when the student completes their survey, they see a message that says "Thank you for completing the survey for ABC 123" which shows the class the survey was submitted for. This page also has the student's name on it. You could ask them to print that out and bring it to class for extra credit. Still, there is some risk in this where unless you have a large class, the student could feel their response's anonymity is in danger.

• Q. I can't find the questions regarding Gender (Male/Female), Course (Elective/Required), or Classification(Senior/Junior/etc). Where are they?
  A. I'm sorry, but we removed these questions from the set since it creates the potential to identify which student did a particular survey. These questions were set by the campus on the paper surveys and the campus has since waived requiring those questions for eCAFE.
• Q. How do I forward/send an email all my students?
  A. You can use the MyUH portal at https://myuh.hawaii.edu/cp/home/displaylogin. You must log in to MyUH and click the "My Tools" tab. You will see a list of the courses you are teaching for this semester. You need to do the following steps for each course: Click on the course name and it will take you to the "Course Homepage". On the left menu under "Course Tools", click the "E-mail" link. It will list all students in that course, so to email all students you need to check "Select All" and then click "Send E-mail". Then the "Compose E-mail" form will pop up. Copy the email we send you and paste it in the "Message" box.
• Q. Why do I need to send an email to my students, why can't the system do it?
  A. We do send emails directly to the student, but we ask that the first email comes from you because we find that without this step, the students assume all subsequent emails we send are either spam or a phishing attempt and they delete our emails without reading the message.
• Q. I forwarded the email to my students, but they're saying the link doesn't work. Why?
  A. It appears that if you use Outlook as your email reader, it sometimes modifies the original URL. Please make sure that when you click on the url, it goes to http://www.hawaii.edu/ecafe and not through a redirect.

Staff

• Q. How do I get our department signed up for eCAFE?
  A. Contact us at the appropriate email listed for your campus here.
• Q. Where can I see the list of questions available for selection?
  A. View a list of all questions available.
• Q. How do I/the department chair view evaluation results?
  A. Access to surveys must be explicitly granted by your instructors.
• Q. What are my responsibilities as the designated staff member for my campus/college/department?
  A.
  • Set up the questions that will appear on the surveys of all instructors under your organization.
  • Set how many questions instructors are allowed to add to their personal surveys, if any.
  • Set which instructors are required to use eCAFE, and which have the option of disabling their online surveys.
  • Verify that all your instructors are listed, as any that aren't will not get a survey.
  • Indicate if your department is the primary organization for any crosslisted courses.
  • Turn ON all the surveys that you want enabled by default. This is particularly important for mandatory instructors.
• Q. How do I know when I am supposed to set up my organization's survey?
  A. You will receive an email from the eCAFE system notifying you when the system is open. You will also receive several reminder emails during the open period.
• Q. How are instructors notified of when they can set up their surveys?
  A. The eCAFE system automatically sends all participating instructors an initial email and several reminder emails during the period during which they can edit their surveys. Still, we will send you and email we ask you to forward to all instructors in your organization. This email lets instructors know that eCAFE is a legitimate system as opposed to spam, and to ensure that we aren't omitting any instructor.
• Q. How do I/the department chair view evaluation results?
  A. Access to surveys must be explicitly granted by your instructors.
• Q. What courses does eCAFE exclude?
  A. None. They should all be there, it's up to you if you want any particular course to use eCAFE or not.
• Q. Can a staff person disable a particular survey?
  A. Yes, click the "Manage Surveys" link in the green bar at the top-right corner of the page. This takes you to a page where you can search for courses (by department, instructor last name and course title). Once you find the course(s) you are looking for, you can turn evaluations on and off. The staff person can manage the ON/OFF setting until the student period ends.
• Q. Every semester each staff has to copy departmental questions from previous semester to new semester. Will there be a checkbox to automatically have this process done?
  A. That feature does not yet exist, but we are looking into it.
• Q. What type of information will be included on the email that goes out to faculty at the beginning of October? Will it include what preferences the department has allowed their faculty (ie, optional/mandatory, whether they can add questions and how many, etc.)
  A. The text of all emails we send out can be found here. (popup window)
• Q. I can't get emailed results to print nicely.
  A. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro or Standard, you can bring that up, click File->Create PDF->From Webpage and then paste in the URL you use to bring up the results. That will create a PDF which should be easily printable.