Regardless of an instructor’s rank or type of appointment (see FAC 422-426), students evaluate instructors of regularly scheduled courses with five or more students enrolled using a nationally normed, standardized survey instrument adopted by the college. (Cross-listed courses and multiple section courses may be combined for evaluation purposes. Experiential courses that the instructor is overseeing but not teaching (like internships, student teaching, etc. will not be included). Instructors who regularly have more than half their teaching load being classes with less than five students will work with the VPAA to develop an alternative method of course evaluation.
The results of these surveys are available to the faculty member and department chairs for formative purposes and to the Faculty Review Committee for summative purposes.
Rational:
The current policy requires all courses to use the IDEA evaluation surveys. However, not all courses/professors benefit from this.
- Courses with less than three students require 100% participation to see results.
- There is little anonymity in small courses and no anonymity in courses with one student.
- Small courses can result in skewed data.
- We are overwhelming students with evaluations, but often not seeing the results of those evaluations, especially in small classes.
- Professors who regularly teach small courses aren’t getting the IDEA results needed for either formative or summative purposes. This change would provide the option of creating an alternative.
- Courses that regularly are set up for one student and are experiential in nature (internships, field experiences, etc.) aren’t well suited to the evaluation questions. For example, the instructor of record serves a very different role in an internship versus a classroom experience. The evaluation questions focus on the instructor role.