Everything Faculty and Chairs/Directors Need to Know for Fall 2016 IDEA Course Evaluations

Scott Behson, PhD

Here is all the information FDU faculty need to use IDEA course evaluations in your Fall 2016 Courses, including information on:

  1. Learning about IDEA
  2. Filling out your Faculty Information Forms
  3. Introducing IDEA to your students and encouraging their responses
  4. Timing of course evaluations

Please note that, consistent with past practice, in the Fall semester, all classes are evaluated. The only exception are classes with fewer than 5 students enrolled, as well as internships, co-ops, independent studies and the like.

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Guidelines for Personnel Review Committees and Other Bodies for Using IDEA as Part of Personnel Review

Scott Behson, PhD

First, please see this document (FRW written IDEA Guidelines) from the FDU Faculty Senate Faculty Rights and Welfare Committee. It contains their recommended guidelines to assist PRCs, Chairs/Directors and Deans in interpreting IDEA reports. Of course, judgment rests, as always with these bodies- each department or unit may have certain criteria they value more than others. However, these guidelines will be helpful to develop cross-university consistency and encourage proper use and interpretation.

Also, please see this post which describes what IDEA data faculty are asked to provide in their teaching portfolios. Of course, this information will be included along with lots of other information, such as peer/chair observations, samples of student work, sample assignments, syllabi and other documentation, grade distributions, and the like. A few quick notes:

  1. Student feedback should be weighted at no more than 30%-40% in the overall assessment of teaching effectiveness.
  2. IDEA, like all student surveys, contains noise and error variance. Therefore, we should be careful not to over-interpret small differences (a 3.9 and a 4.1 in any one class is largely indistinguishable). Also, we should take much more stock in trends we see when we look across several classes, as opposed to fixating on one score that may be an exception. In general, we can get reasonably valid interpretations by looking at multiple semesters of data.

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Everything Faculty Need to Know About Reporting their IDEA Feedback Reports for Faculty Review

Scott Behson, PhD

Here you will find everything you need to know about what faculty need to submit for personnel files and faculty review, and how you can easily provide this information.

Here are two documents that spells it all out.

Here is an addendum from the FDU Faculty Senate Executive Committee to the above instructions. Basically, it states you may also include adjusted averages alongside raw averages. (Addendum from The Executive Committee of the FDU Faculty Senate)

Here is the Excel spreadsheet junior faculty can use to derive Endeavor Rapport and Pedagogical Skill scores:

You can save a sheet of paper on the spreadsheets by printing in landscape.

This is all you need!

Everything Faculty Need to Know About Fall 2015 Course Evaluations

Scott Behson, PhD

Here is all the information FDU faculty need to use IDEA course evaluations in your Fall 2015 Courses, including information on:

  1. Learning about IDEA
  2. Filling out your Faculty Information Forms
  3. Introducing IDEA to your students and encouraging their responses
  4. Timing of course evaluations

Please note that, consistent with past practice, in the Fall semester, all classes are evaluated. The only exception are classes with fewer than 5 students enrolled, as well as internships, co-ops, independent studies and the like.

Continue reading →