Service overview
The Mercury online course evaluation system allows students to complete end-of-course evaluations online for all lecture, lab, and seminar courses with an enrolment of 5 or more students. Course evaluations submitted through the Mercury system are completely anonymous.
Instructors do not have access to course evaluation results until the final grades for the course have been submitted and processed. Academic unit heads (Chairs and Directors; and Deans of Faculties without departments) have secure access to their unit’s results, both numerical results and comments.
Numerical course evaluation results are made available to students when the following two conditions are met: an instructor has not objected to access, and an adequate response rate has been achieved. Written comments are always treated as confidential and are not available to students.
Course evaluations may be used, as one indicator of teaching effectiveness:
- To help instructors improve the future delivery of courses;
- To inform students about courses and instructors;
- As a component of the teaching dossier; and
- To help administrators and faculty committees in their decision-making processes.
Who can use it
Active registered McGill students.
How to request & access the service
Students
Access to Mercury is granted automatically to active registered students.
You can access the Mercury system:
- At http://mcgill.bluera.com/mcgill/ .
- From the Mercury widget on the myCourses homepage.
- From an email you receive from mercury.info when your course evaluations are available. (Do not send email to that address, it is an outbox only.)
To view previous numerical course evaluation results that have been made available to the McGill community (up to Winter 2019), visit Reports and Results on the Mercury website.
Cost
The cost is covered under your student fees.
Availability
When are course evaluations available?
Please see the Evaluation periods page on the Mercury website.
When are course evaluation results available?
Results are made available to students on the following dates:
- Fall evaluations: March 1 of the following calendar year
- Winter evaluations: June 1 of the same calendar year
- Summer evaluations: October 1 of the same calendar year.
Note: Results are available only if the following conditions are met:
- An instructor has not objected to access*; and
- An adequate response rate has been received, as follows:
Class size Response rate (%) 5 - 11 min 5 responses 12 - 30 at least 40% 31 - 100 at least 35% 101 - 200 at least 30% 201 or more at least 25%
* Please note that for courses with multiple instructors, in order for course evaluation results to be disseminated to students, all instructors assigned to the course must not object to access.
Find out more about viewing numerical course evaluation results for previous terms.
The service is available 24 X 7, except during planned maintenance or outages, which will be posted on the IT Services website.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I change or delete my course evaluation once it has been submitted?
Please complete this webform if you would like to change or delete your course evaluation submission. Note that if the course evaluation period has ended, it is not possible to change or delete your submission.
For more information about Mercury, visit Mercury Course Evaluations website.
Best practices & policies
- Review the Guidelines for completing course evaluations and providing constructive feedback.
- Watch this short video: “Implicit bias in course evaluations: Think before you click!”
- View strategies to encourage student participation for student association leaders.
Training & documentation
Self-serve resources:
Mercury website for students
Mercury for Faculty, Staff and Teaching Assistants
Support
For technical support, search for Mercury in the IT Services catalog to find the request that best describes the task you want to perform in Mercury.
If you do not find the task required in the task catalog, require assistance with something else or you have a general question about Mercury, please contact the Service Desk.