Koji vs SmartEvals: Course Evaluation Software Compared (2026)
SmartEvals automates traditional SET surveys on a US-hosted platform; Koji is an EU-based, AI-native evaluation tool with conversational interviews, automatic thematic analysis, and GDPR data residency. A fair, sourced comparison for European buyers.
Koji Education Team
Product ·
Short answer: SmartEvals (a CollegeNET product) is a mature, US-headquartered course-evaluation platform that automates the administration of traditional student-evaluation-of-teaching (SET) surveys — roster syncing, scheduling, reminders, LMS/SIS integration, and standard reporting. Koji is an AI-native, EU-based evaluation platform that replaces static Likert questionnaires with AI-moderated conversational interviews and automatic thematic analysis. If your priority is efficiently running conventional numeric SET surveys on a cost-transparent, US-hosted system, SmartEvals is a solid choice. If you need richer qualitative evidence, standardized bias-aware moderation, closing-the-loop action tracking, and EU/GDPR data residency for accreditation, Koji is purpose-built for that.
This guide compares the two fairly for European quality-assurance directors, deans, and heads of teaching and learning who are procuring evaluation software in 2026.
At a glance
| Dimension | SmartEvals (CollegeNET) | Koji |
|---|---|---|
| Core method | Structured Likert + open-text SET surveys | AI-moderated conversational interviews with adaptive follow-ups, plus structured items |
| Qualitative handling | Manual reading of comments; standard comment reports | Automatic thematic analysis, sentiment, and theme frequency across responses |
| Depth of feedback | Fixed questionnaire; no live probing of vague answers | AI probes vague answers ("can you give an example?") in a standardized way |
| Consistency / bias | Same questions for all, but no follow-up standardization | Standardized, bias-aware moderation applied to every interview |
| Formative + summative | Both supported | Both supported |
| Closing the loop | Reports delivered to faculty and administrators | Action tracking and longitudinal cohort reporting |
| LMS / SIS | LTI integration (Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas), SIS roster sync, SSO | Shareable links and LMS embedding; SSO options |
| Data residency | US-headquartered; confirm EU hosting/GDPR terms directly | EU-based data handling aligned to GDPR |
| Public pricing | Not published; company cites low total cost of ownership and ~3.5% annual increases | Not public as of publication; request a quote |
Facts about SmartEvals in this table are drawn from its own published materials and third-party listings; where a detail was not publicly verifiable we say so rather than guess.
What SmartEvals does well
SmartEvals has spent years refining the operational side of course evaluations, and it shows. Its strengths are real:
- Full-cycle automation. It automates survey distribution, secure response collection, reminders, and report generation for faculty and administrators, which removes most of the manual admin burden from a large evaluation cycle.
- Integration depth. SmartEvals offers Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) integration with Moodle, Blackboard, and Canvas, single sign-on, and automatic syncing of course rosters and evaluation schedules from student-information systems. For institutions running thousands of sections, that plumbing matters.
- Handling of complex course structures. It has explicit support for team-taught and cross-listed courses — a genuine pain point that lighter survey tools handle poorly.
- Cost transparency and support. The company emphasises a low total cost of ownership versus paper, modest annual price increases (it cites roughly 3.5%), unlimited administrator and instructor training at no extra cost, and in-house support rather than outsourced help desks.
For an institution whose model of course evaluation is "run standardized SET surveys efficiently at scale," SmartEvals is a credible, well-supported option.
Where SmartEvals is limited
The limitations are not about SmartEvals being a poor product — they are structural to the traditional SET-survey model it automates. SmartEvals itself acknowledges the core problem: increasing response rates is "only half the battle," because responses like "Good class" do not offer much insight. That is the crux.
- Static questionnaires cannot probe. A Likert scale plus a free-text box captures whatever a student volunteers in one pass. It cannot ask "you said the labs felt rushed — which lab, and what would have helped?" The richest, most actionable feedback is exactly what a fixed form leaves on the table.
- Qualitative analysis stays manual. Open-text comments still have to be read and coded by hand. At scale this is slow, inconsistent between reviewers, and often skipped — so the numeric average dominates decisions even though the comments hold the actionable detail.
- Numeric SET scores carry known bias. Decades of research show raw SET averages can be influenced by factors unrelated to teaching quality. Automating the same instrument faster does not address that.
- US data hosting. SmartEvals is US-headquartered. For European institutions, data residency and GDPR terms are procurement-critical; as of publication SmartEvals public materials do not detail EU hosting, so European buyers should confirm hosting location, sub-processors, and Standard Contractual Clauses directly before signing.
What Koji does differently
Koji is built around a different premise: the most useful course feedback comes from a conversation, not a form. Its AI conducts a short, moderated interview with each student, adapting follow-up questions to what the student actually says while keeping the moderation standardized across every respondent.
- Conversational depth, standardized. Every student gets consistent, bias-aware prompting, and the AI probes vague answers for specifics — so you get the "why" behind a rating, not just the rating.
- Automatic thematic analysis. Instead of a QA officer hand-coding hundreds of comments, Koji clusters responses into themes, quantifies how often each theme appears, and surfaces representative quotes. That turns qualitative data into evidence you can actually report.
- Closing the loop. Koji supports action tracking against identified themes and longitudinal cohort reporting, so you can show an auditor not just what students said but what changed as a result and whether the next cohort noticed.
- EU/GDPR by design. Data handling is EU-based and GDPR-aligned, which removes a whole class of procurement friction for European institutions.
Koji runs on the same AI interview engine that powers the main Koji platform (koji.so) for customer and user research — the education product applies that engine to student and course evaluation.
The accreditation angle
For European buyers, evaluation software is not just an operations tool — it is an evidence engine for quality assurance. The ESG 2015 Standard 1.9 expects institutions to monitor and periodically review programmes, involving students, analysing the information collected, adapting the programme, and communicating the resulting actions. A pile of numeric SET averages is thin evidence for that standard. Koji is designed to produce standardized qualitative evidence, thematic trends over time, and documented action tracking — the kind of material that maps directly onto accreditation and quality-cycle requirements. See our guides on turning student feedback into ESG evidence and programme review and revalidation evidence.
When SmartEvals is the better choice
Honesty helps you make the right call, so here is where a competitor may fit better than Koji:
- You are firmly committed to the traditional SET model and need to run it at very high scale with deep SIS/LMS automation, and conversational depth is not a current priority.
- Your institution mandates specific numeric SET items for policy, union, or promotion-and-tenure reasons and needs a system optimised for that exact instrument.
- You require a specific existing LTI integration (for example a long-standing Blackboard or Canvas roster-sync workflow) that is already validated on SmartEvals.
If those describe you, a mature SET-survey platform like SmartEvals — or one of the EvaSys alternatives — may serve you well. If, instead, you want deeper qualitative evidence and EU data residency, Koji is the stronger fit.
Switching from a traditional SET platform
Moving from an established survey tool is less disruptive than teams fear, and the honest picture helps you plan. Your existing question bank does not have to be discarded: standardized items can run alongside the conversational layer, so historical numeric trends stay comparable while you add qualitative depth. Rollout usually starts with a pilot — one faculty or a cluster of modules — so the QA office can compare the evidence a conversational interview produces against the previous cycle's Likert-plus-comment output before committing the whole institution. Change management matters more than configuration: instructors need to see that AI-moderated interviews reduce, not increase, their marking-season workload by delivering analysed themes instead of a wall of raw comments. Budget for a term of parallel running, agree how response rate and representativeness will be reported, and confirm data-residency terms in writing up front. None of this is unique to Koji — it is the same diligence any evaluation-platform migration deserves — but doing it deliberately is what turns a tool switch into a genuine improvement in your quality evidence.
Bottom line
SmartEvals is a capable, cost-transparent automation layer for the traditional course-evaluation survey, strongest for US institutions running SET at scale. Koji is a modern, EU-based alternative that changes the method itself — conversational AI interviews plus automatic thematic analysis — to produce richer, accreditation-ready evidence with GDPR data residency. For European quality-assurance teams weighing both SEO-visible "SmartEvals alternatives" queries and the substance behind them, the deciding questions are: do you need depth beyond numeric averages, and do you need your data in the EU?
Compare more options in our best course evaluation software in Europe guide, or see AI course evaluation vs traditional SET surveys.
Ready to see conversational course evaluation in action? Explore Koji for Education and book a walkthrough with your own evaluation questions.