Student Narrative Evaluations

Remember - narrative evaluations, once submitted, are part of your official university transcript. Give time and thought to what you write.

There is no single way to write a good evaluation. The course, your experience, your style, and your needs all contribute to your self-assessment goals. A good evaluation selects the most important results of the learning process.  A sloppy, careless self-evaluation filled with misspellings, incomplete sentences, and half-thoughts leaves a poor final impression even if you did very well in a course of study.

Try to write in a way that communicates information about the content of your experience with the course or independent study. Do not just speak in abstractions and personal feelings such as, “This class was extremely important to me because through discussion and the readings my thinking developed immensely.” What subject? Which discussions? What did you read? Think about what? Developed from where to where? A reader who does not know what the class studied should be able to gain an idea from your self-evaluation. One should be able to form some judgment about how well you understand a subject from what you say about it, not merely that you claim to understand it. In other words, BE SPECIFIC, and BE CONCRETE.

Please consider the content of the self-evaluation too - you may not want to divulge personal health information that will become part of your official record. 

• You will have 3900 characters (spaces, punctuation, words) to write an evaluation.
• You will touch on your learning goals, assignments, participation, and personal reflection of the course.
• Please do not put personal information that you wouldn't want future readers to know about you. Remember, narrative evaluations become part of your official university transcript and anyone requesting your transcripts will read your evaluations.

It is suggested that you open a word processing document and draft your narrative evaluation. Remember your character count (including spaces and punctuation) is 3900. When you go to submit your evaluation, you will use OnBase and being able to copy and paste your evaluation into the program will be helpful as OnBase times out after 20 minutes of inactivity and data isn't saved if you haven't used the save function. Drafting in another document could save you trouble losing data. 

Learning Goal Accomplishments

• What are the course learning goals? What do you now understand best about this subject? Least well?
• What do you need to learn next about this subject? What personal learning goals do you have, both immediate and long-range consideration?
• What did you expect to learn? What did you actually learn?
• Were there any themes or topics that particularly interested you most? Why? Which questions excite an interest for further inquiry?

Assignments

• Did you complete all assignments?
• Were there any projects you can name and briefly explain what you learned and studied?
• What stimulated your thinking most? Did films, guest speakers, field trips, or other activities enhance your learning? How?

Participation

• This is a [insert number of credits] credit class, or about [insert number of hours] of my study time this quarter. Did you give it that much time? Remember - 1 credit is equal to 1 hour class time and 2 hours study time per week
• Did you communicate with the instructor about absences?

Personal Reflection

• What are your strongest and weakest points as a student? What did you do to improve the weak points? What will you do next?
• Are you the same person who began the class ten weeks ago? What’s different?
• How is the material expanding your horizons, stretching your mind and belief systems, challenging your former opinions, and having relevance to your daily life?

Students have two options for logging into the system. 

*It is important to note that you can only have one browser open with OnBase at a time. If you have multiple open, the screen can lock. If you run into locking issues, please close your browsers and use the login information below to start again.

*If you attempt to login and get an error screen, please email Fairhaven.CRM@wwu.edu from your student email. If you can send a screenshot of the error that is helpful but not required.

View one specific course in the system

Students receive emails with links to specific Fairhaven courses the Monday of dead week *except during the summer 6-week term. Find those emails and click on the course links to be directed to that particular course evaluation.

*In summer quarter - all student evaluation emails are sent the Monday of dead week for the 9-week session (or in other words, the Monday of summer week 8). If a student wants to access their evaluation before week 8, please login to the OnBase system using the link in "view all evaluations in the system" header below.

View all evaluations in the system

A student can also view all of their evaluations in the system by using the login method below. You can view all current and old evaluations in the system with this method.

• Login to OnBase
• Evaluations are sorted by status and then term. Click on the drop down boxes and then the evaluation you'd like to view. *If you are interested in learning more about the different evaluation statuses, please see the Evaluation Status Terms section of this website.

Once your evaluation has been drafted you can submit it to your instructor through the OnBase system using the steps below.

• Find your evaluation by logging into OnBase using one of the methods listed in the “Login to OnBase” section above.
  1. If using the direct link from email, you will view the specific course you’ve clicked and can take action from there.
  2. If logging in to see all evaluations, you will need to use the drop down options to find the evaluation you want to work on. You will most often use the drop down for “Student Not Started”, “Student Saved as Draft”, and the “Returned to Student” to find the evaluations you still need to submit. *If you are interested in learning more about the different evaluation statuses, please see the Evaluation Status Terms section of this website.
• Check that your name and pronouns match your preferences. If you change these on this form, it does not change in the Western system and only applies to this form. If you’d like more information about a name change in all WWU systems, please visit the Registrar’s Office website.
• Fill in the student evaluation box for the evaluation. *Remember you are limited to 3900 characters.
• Click "Submit to Faculty" then “Submit/Save”.

Occasionally, a faculty member will return your narrative evaluation to you for edits. You will need to make edits and submit the evaluation again for class credit. You will always receive an email notice when an evaluation is returned.

• A faculty member may post their suggestions in a few ways:
  • Notes. They could enter a note, or multiple notes, via the “Note(s)” feature. You can access these notes by opening the evaluation and clicking on the “Note(s)” at the bottom left of the narrative evaluation document.
  • Faculty Evaluation block. Sometimes faculty require more space than the notes feature provides so they will type their suggested edits, and maybe even draft a faculty evaluation, in the faculty evaluation block.
• Submitting. Once you have made edits, you will scroll to the bottom of the screen and select “submit to faculty”. Remember to hit the Submit/Save button too.

After you’ve started an evaluation, you may want to save a draft and finish it later. Remember that you must fully “submit to faculty” in order to get credit for the class.

• Make your edits to an evaluation.
• Scroll down to the routing selector at the bottom of the page and choose “Save as Draft” then click the "Submit/Save" button.
• This will put your evaluation into "In Progress" status.
• When you return to the evaluation, you will find it by clicking on the email link or by checking your “in progress” evaluations.

Understanding the "status" of narrative evaluations will help you understand where the evaluation is within the OnBase system. There are two kinds of statuses - "historical" and "current". Historical statuses are statuses we used in the Banner 8 system. Some are no longer used. Current statuses are updated statuses for the OnBase system as of 2026. All statuses are listed here to help you understand the queue. 

Current Statuses 

Student Not Started

Student has taken no action on narrative evaluation. Grade should not be given.

Student Saved as Draft

Student has either saved as draft and/or has not submitted to faculty member. Grade should not be given.

Returned to Student

Narrative evaluation has been returned to the student. The student may have saved as draft again but typically, a grade is not given.

Submitted for Faculty Evaluation

Narrative evaluation is currently at the faculty step. Faculty may have saved as draft or may have not yet taken any action. Grade should be credited.

Evaluation Complete

Evaluation completed by both student and faculty and is locked.

No Record – Inactive

The form was lapsed into this status by OnBase Workflow as the student did not submit by the one-year post-term deadline. NX grade can no longer be completed for credit.

No Evaluation Required

Course does not require a narrative evaluation.

Historical Statuses in the system before spring 2026

Not Started

Student has taken no action on narrative evaluation.

In Progress

Student has either saved as draft or the evaluation was returned by faculty. Evaluation has not been (re)submitted to faculty.

No Record

The form was lapsed into this status as the student did not submit by the one-year post-term deadline. NX grade can no longer be completed for credit.

1. My OnBase screen has locked and I can't type anything into the box.

   This is typically because you have multiple browser windows open with OnBase. You can only have one browser window open with OnBase at a time. If you have multiple open, the screen can lock. If you run into locking issues, please close your browsers and use the login information below to start again. If the issue persists, you can email Fairhaven.CRM@wwu.edu. Providing a screenshot is always helpful.

2. I tried to login to OnBase using the links provided but nothing is working. 

   If you attempt to login and get an error screen, please email Fairhaven.CRM@wwu.edu from your student email. If you can send a screenshot of the error that is helpful but not required.

3. I submitted an evaluation but I would like to edit the document. What do I do now?

   Once you submit an evaluation, a student cannot edit the document. If you'd like to make edits, please email your faculty member and ask them to return the evaluation to you. You will get an email notice once the evaluation is returned and ready for you to edit.

4. How do I view old evaluations (completed or not)?

   A student can view all of their evaluations in the system by using the login method below. You can view all current and old evaluations in the system with this method.

• Login to OnBase
• Evaluations are sorted by status and then term. Click on the drop down boxes and then the evaluation you'd like to view. *If you are interested in learning more about the different evaluation statuses, please see the Evaluation Status Terms section of this website.

3.  How can I view the unofficial version of all my narrative evaluation transcript?

   Please visit https://fairhaven.wwu.edu/fairhaven-narrative-evaluations and find the instructions under the "Printing Unofficial Narrative Evaluations" section.

4. Who can I contact for help with the system?

   You can email the Fairhaven Curriculum & Records Manager at Fairhaven.CRM@wwu.edu.