IASystem vs Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys

IASystem is a course evaluation system for colleges and universities assessing teaching and learning. It supports online and paper evaluations, with administrators able to customize forms across an institution, college, or department. Instructors can add course-specific scaled or open-ended questions. Students can access evaluations from Canvas, Blackboard, and other LMS applications through an LTI tool; a web API supports campus integrations such as displaying evaluation links in a student portal. Reports include course summaries, combined summaries, administrative high/low and ratings summaries, survey lists, and data exports. Institution-specific reliability estimates, item-level deciles, and regression analyses help interpret and adjust evaluation results. IASystem uses HTTPS, role-based permissions, and server-side processing for calculations, validations, and reports. Reports and extracts omit student names, IDs, and login information. A one-term pilot license is listed as free. Annual rates are per enrolled student, from $1.59 a year for institutions with 20,000 or more FTE students; enrollment categories list a 5,404 USD one-time setup fee. Paper forms and scanning cost extra, with costs depending on usage.

Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys is a web and API platform for higher education institutions collecting and analyzing feedback about courses, instructors, and academic programs. Institutions can customize surveys by program, department, course, or modality, while instructors add their own questions. Mobile-friendly surveys, reminders, alerts, and optional final-grade gating support response collection. Instructor Insights applies AI to feedback for summaries, sentiment analysis, takeaways, and recommended actions. Reporting can synthesize, aggregate, disaggregate, and compare results over time. Listed integrations include Ellucian Banner and Colleague, Anthology Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, Moodle, Watermark Faculty Success, and Watermark Planning & Self-Study. API, FTP, and SIS connections are also listed. Capabilities include instructor evaluations, benchmarking, approval and feedback workflows, evidence collection, exports, PDF curriculum exports, version history, assessment tools, and single sign-on. Watermark lists SOC 2 Type 2, FERPA, and GDPR resources. Implementation is stated as 60 days; pricing is available on request.