Relative to the enrollment in the course, the impact of an outlier may be exaggerated by a low response rate. Although possibly disproportionate, these responses do reflect some student opinions and care must be taken when interpreting the survey. Multiple surveys across courses and semesters should be considered together, and outliers should be recognized as such. Please refer to the guidelines for interpreting the Student Instructional Rating Survey. SIRS is not intended to be the sole determiner in the assessment of teaching; other evidence of teaching ability can and should be included to offset the impact of an outlier. If the outlier is due to student error (e.g., filling out the wrong survey, or reversing the scale), please refer to our policy for requesting corrections.