Student Evaluation of Instructio

Student Evaluation of Instruction Items and

Administration and Reporting Procedures

October, 2007

The six items below shall be included on all Student Evaluation of Instruction (SEI) forms. Results from these six items will be reported for all personnel decisions in which SEI results are used. (These questions replace the single question used for such purposes in the past.)

Instructors and departments are encouraged to include additional items to provide information for teaching improvement and program evaluation. (Results from additional items will not be reported to JPC.)

	Strongly Disagree				Strongly Agree
1. I was looking forward to taking this class.^a	1	2	3	4	5
2. The instructor was helpful to students.	1	2	3	4	5
3. The instructor was well prepared.	1	2	3	4	5
4. The instructor communicated the subject matter clearly.	1	2	3	4	5
5. I learned a great deal from this instructor.	1	2	3	4	5
6. Overall, this instructor was excellent.	1	2	3	4	5

^a Item #1 is used as a measure of a student’s interest in taking the course. Student motivation has been shown to have some impact on student evaluations.

CLASSROOM ADMINISTRATION GUIDELINES

The instructor and any teaching assistants shall not participate in the administration of student evaluations of instruction. Neither shall distribute the SEI forms, be present in the room when the forms are completed, or collect the forms. Departments shall create policies to ensure that other individuals are available to administer the SEI forms.

Results will be reported to instructors only after final grades have been submitted.

All responses to the SEI will be anonymous. Students shall not sign or in any way identify themselves on the SEI forms. It is recommended that evaluations not be administered in courses with fewer than five students, as it is difficulty to protect student anonymity with fewer students.

The following instructions will be given to students (either in writing or read aloud)

“This course evaluation is an important means for you to express your view of your classroom experience. Although we assess the quality of instruction in many ways, we place great value on student input because of the unique perspective you have on what occurs in the classroom throughout the semester. Thus you are important partners in the process of making the course more effective, the instructor more attuned to his or her strengths and weaknesses, and the university a better place to learn. As such we ask you to treat the process professionally, seriously, sensitively, and collegially. Carefully consider the questions and answer truthfully. Your responses are one important factor in decisions affecting the career of your instructor. Instructors will not have access to course evaluations until after grades have been posted. We will treat the evaluation forms as the confidential documents that they are. These general guidelines also should be followed:

You should be given a minimum of 10 minutes to complete the evaluation.
The instructor, as well as any teaching assistants, should not be present when you are completing the evaluation.
The designated representative should deliver completed evaluations promptly to the proper office.”

Departments and instructors can provide additional instructions for any items added for teaching improvement or program evaluation.

Evaluations shall not be administered during the final exam period. It is recommended that evaluations be administered during weeks 12 to 13.

The timing of evaluations should not coincide with special classroom events.

INTERPRETATION GUIDELINES

Student evaluation of instruction will be only one of several measures of teaching effectiveness. Departments will develop additional procedures to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Additionally, SEI scores will be interpreted within the context of variables known to be related to evaluations (e.g. student motivation, class size, discipline, etc.) SEI scores will not be compared across instructors.

SEI results will be reported only to one decimal place. Personnel decisions will be based on evaluations from courses over several terms. SEI scores from a single episode of a course will never be used to justify a personnel decision. Best practices suggest such decisions be based on at least 5 episodes of courses over a two year period, more if the courses have fewer than 15 students. Trivial differences across courses should be ignored. Decisions will be based on overall patterns across courses across terms. Frequency distributions for relevant items will be provided to department chairs and instructors.

PROCEDURES FOR REPORTING SEI RESULTS TO JPC

Departments will report the fractional median (reported to one decimal place) for the individual instructor of the composite of the six global SEI items for each course taught during the last 3 years. Departments also will report the overall fractional median for all faculty. *Scantron forms are encouraged for SEI’s so that results can be computed by Information Technology to eliminate human error in calculations.