Frequently Asked Questions
CIMER Portal & Accessing Surveys
The CIMER Portal is the password protected section of the CIMER website that houses Entering Mentoring, Entering Research, and Mentoring Up training curricula and the CIMER Assessment Platform.
Visit the CIMER Portal and select “New User?”. You will be prompted to enter an email and new password for your account. Although not required, additional profile fields may completed such as institution, position, and discipline. If you have been assigned a survey in the Platform, a CIMER profile has already been created with the email address provided by your administrator.
Log into the CIMER Portal and click on My Surveys > Surveys to Take. Your assigned survey(s) will be listed on the page. Visit the Taking a Survey on the CIMER Assessment Platform slides for more information.
A unique password was provided in the invitation email from your program administrator. If you cannot locate that email or recall your password, contact CIMER Customer Service at cimerassessment@wcer.wisc.edu. Alternatively, you may select “Forgot Password” on the CIMER Portal to receive an email to reset your password.
Log into the CIMER Portal and select My User Profile > Change My Password to receive an email with instructions to reset your password.
Setting up a Project in the CIMER Assessment Platform
Visit the Setting Up a New Project page to view the five main steps for new teams interested in using the Platform.
The cost for new teams to build their project in the Platform is $4,000 for each Project Group. This includes technical development, consulting, customer service, and training. More information on cost and project groups may be found on the Setting Up a New Project page.
The current timeline for building a project in the Platform is 2-4 months. This timeline allows for the developers to create your infrastructure and for CIMER and your team to have a series of consultation and training meetings.
Individuals who attend a CIMER Facilitating Entering Mentoring or Facilitating Entering Research workshop have access to free evaluation services to evaluate their mentor and mentee trainings. See the Evaluating Entering Mentoring and Evaluating Entering Research pages for more information.
Visit the Training page to learn more about the types of training offered by CIMER and select the Service Request Form to formally request a training or to partner with CIMER for a grant. The CIMER team will follow up to discuss the specifics of your request, including any budgetary considerations.
Teams using the Platform have great project autonomy; each team:
- Determines how to organize their project using CIMER infrastructure
- Decides what questions to include on their surveys
- Has full ownership of their data and can access it at anytime
- Is responsible for managing their IRB for data collection
- Has full administrative access to create surveys and manage data collection
CIMER supports teams using the Platform by providing consultation and technical support.
Yes! Teams may add organization or program logos to their Project Group. The logos will appear on the top of all surveys that are assigned to users.
Yes! Many of the Platform features are intuitive and similar to other survey software systems. Teams who are new to the Platform participate in guided training to learn about administration features and functionality and have access to step-by-step instruction guides.
Key features unique to the Platform include:
- Multiple project administrative access levels to control which team members have access to surveys and identifiable data
- Survey standardization to streamline data collection across events
- Option for individual or paired survey data collection across events
- Automatically generated reports and raw datasets available at both the individual level (each event) as well as the aggregate level (across all events)
IRB Protocol Requirements & Project Data
We ask for projects to have an IRB protocol to make sure that all data collected has the proper oversight. If you are not collecting data for research (e.g. program evaluation only), you do not need an IRB protocol.
Typically the CIMER research team does not need to be listed in the IRB protocol because we do not access your data or administer surveys. If your IRB office requires someone from the CIMER team to be listed in the IRB protocol, we can provide names and emails of appropriate personnel.
Yes, all data is stored on a secure web server in a networked storage file system at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Access to data is controlled by the CIMER research team. Further, each team using the Platform determines which team members have access to both identifiable and de-identifiable data.
Survey data collected in the Platform is identifiable. The Platform requires administrators to upload the names and emails of the survey users who will be assigned a survey. This information is linked with their survey data and Project Administrators may choose to include identifiable information in raw datasets.
For more information on Platform administration, including step-by-step instruction guides and frequently asked questions about survey management, visit the CIMER Assessment Platform Administration Google Site.