Faculty Senate Resolution
#95-24
Principles to Guide the Use of the
Student Opinion Data
Principle 1: That student opinion of
instruction be only one of the ways to evaluate teaching. Unit
heads, and others who evaluate teaching, should seek additional ways such as
peer reviews, reviews of course syllabi, and other methods depending upon
their particular needs and interests.
Principle
2: Faculty in all eligible courses will
allow time for student evaluation forms to be distributed and collected by a
student enrolled in the class. This is necessary in order to ensure completeness
and reliability of data. Units would be free, of course, to develop other
instruments for use in addition to the Teaching Effectiveness Committee form
and, in accord with Appendix C, to use only data from those other
instruments.
Principle 3: That the approved form
be administered every semester.
Principle 4: That data from
the approved form be processed in such a way that both individual faculty and
unit heads know the following:
a. the mean, median, and standard
deviation for items 1 through 23 for each course.
b. A frequency distribution of the
responses to each of the 27 items.
c. A summed score for items 1
through 16, a measure of teaching effectiveness. In addition, unit and
institutional means, medians and standard deviations of the effectiveness score
will be included for all courses of the same level taught at the university that
semester. For example, statistics will be provided for all 1000-level
courses if the course evaluated is a 1000-level course, for all 2000-level
courses if the course evaluated is a 2000-level course, and so on up to all
6000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 6000-level course.
d. A summed score for items 17 and
18, a measure of course difficulty. In addition, unit and institutional
means, medians and standard deviations of the difficulty score will be included
for all courses of the same level taught at the university that semester.
For example, statistics will be provided for all 1000-level courses if the
course evaluated is a 1000-level course, for all 2000-level courses
if the course evaluated is a 2000-level course, and so on up to all 6000-level
courses if the course evaluated is a 6000-level course.
Principle 5: That any analyses
of student opinion pay attention only to data that indicate a statistically high
or statistically low performance when compared to the standards.
Principle 6: That, except in the
case of new faculty, administrative evaluations be based not on course-by-course
or semester-by semester data but on patterns established over the past several
semesters in all courses taught by a faculty member.