After a site visit, members of the visiting team evaluate one another. This article explains how to submit one colleague evaluation through the Portal. To see who you still need to evaluate, see See Whom You May Still Evaluate.
Before You Begin
Prerequisites
- Sign in to the Portal as a member of the visit’s team.
- Make sure your Portal user is linked to an organization. If you are not linked to any organization, you cannot see accreditation evaluation information here.
- The Submit Evaluation button appears on the visit’s page only when the visit is accepting evaluations and your device’s clock is within the evaluation window your association set. If the window has closed, or evaluations are not turned on for this visit, the button does not appear.
- Your organization needs an accreditation record on file. If it does not, you’ll see a message instead of the evaluation form, even though the evaluation is about the school you visited.
Submit an Evaluation
- From the visit’s page, select Submit Evaluation.
- If you have more than one colleague left to evaluate, choose the colleague you want to evaluate, then select Continue.
- Complete the form by rating your colleague from 1 to 10, and indicate whether you would work with them again.
- Add comments. Your association may include comment fields that only staff review, depending on how the association designed the form. If those fields are on the form, you can see and complete them.
- If the form includes a review step, review your score and recommendation, then select Submit.
Result
Your evaluation is saved. If your association turned on confirmation emails for this type of evaluation, and you have an email address on file, you receive a confirmation. If the form has a completion page, you see it before returning to the visit. Otherwise, you return to the visit right away.
Tip
Colleagues you have already evaluated, or are not allowed to evaluate under your association’s rules, still appear in the list, but they are disabled and labeled. You are never offered yourself as an option.
If You Got an Error After Submitting
If you see an error after selecting Submit, your evaluation may still have been saved. The confirmation email is sent in the same request that saves your evaluation, so the error can mean the email step failed even though your answers were recorded. If you’re not sure, check with the accrediting body before submitting again, because a second submission creates a separate record instead of replacing the first.
After you submit an evaluation, there is no evaluation center or other Portal page where you can view, edit, or delete it yourself. If you need to correct or remove an evaluation after submitting, contact the accrediting body. Only accreditation staff can make that change from the Console.
Saving a Draft and Coming Back Later
If you need to stop partway through, you can leave the form and return later. Your answers are kept as a draft tied to your account and this evaluation, and the form offers to resume where you left off. A draft is not an evaluation. Nobody else can see it, and it does not count toward what you still owe until you submit it.
Warning
If you cancel the form instead of saving a draft, you are asked to confirm, and then your answers and any draft are discarded. Use the form’s save option if you want to keep your progress.
Why the Submit Evaluation Button Might Be Missing
Evaluations open only during the window your association configured for the visit. That window is a specific date range, checked against the clock on your own device. Outside that window, or if the visit was never set up to accept evaluations, the button does not appear. If you believe you are inside the window and still do not see it, check your device’s date and time, or contact the accrediting body.
Administrators set this window on the site visit itself by turning on evaluations and setting open and close dates when editing the visit. If they leave those dates blank, there is no window at all, and evaluations can be submitted at any time.