The IDEA Center

Dr. Shelley Chapman has joined The IDEA Center as the Vice President for Client Services. Shelley comes to us from Southern Wesleyan University where she served as the Vice President for Academic Services and Director of the Center for Transformational Learning. With a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University with a focus on higher education, curriculum theory and learning theory, Shelley will be a great asset to the Center as she applies over 20 years of experience as a teacher, administrator, and faculty development professional. She has direct experience with IDEA from her service as the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Johns Hopkins University. She brings additional experience from The Community College of Baltimore County. Shelley succeeds Dr. Amy Gross who now serves the Center as the Vice President for Knowledge Management and Special Projects. You can contact Shelley at: Shelley@theideacenter.org or 800.255.2757.

Since August 1, 1975, The IDEA Center, Manhattan, Kan., has quietly, efficiently and systematically gathered data and offered feedback for faculty improvement in hundreds of thousands of college and university classes. The brainchild of one psychology professor who believed that student learning, rather than student whims, should be the yardstick of faculty evaluation, the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction has spun off a suite of improvement feedback instruments currently used in 370 colleges and universities.
 
In 1968, Donald Hoyt, Ph.D., faculty member and administrator at Kansas State University in Manhattan, began creating a student ratings of teaching instrument that looked at student learning relative to an instructor’s objectives, rather than simply measuring an instructor’s behaviors or popularity.
 

Congratulations to Dr. Chuck Phillips, Assistant Dean of Assessment and Associate Professor at Drake College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Des Moines, IA.
 
Phillips was one of three individuals awarded the 2010 Award for Excellence in Assessment from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. His award was for Drake’s use of IDEA in their assessment work. His presentation, Assessment of a college-wide teaching goal and related curricular methods, will be made at their annual meeting this July in Seattle, WA. 
 

IDEA research was the focus of an article May 6, 2010. "Online Evaluations Show Same Results, Lower Response Rate," by Mary Helen Miller appeared in the online issue of Wired Campus - Chronicle of Higher Education. May 6, 2010. This research study was also presented at the 2010 AERA meeting in Denver, CO.
 
The April 30, 2010 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features The IDEA Center’s work in article by David Glenn.  The IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction system is highlighted in “Rating Your Professors: Scholars Test Improved Course Evaluations.” Along with some comments from Bill Pallett, representatives from Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania share some of the ways they use IDEA and how it has been valuable to them. 
 
 “Professors Who Focus on Honing Their Teaching are a Distinct Breed” by Peter Schmidt cites recent IDEA research about the role of department chairs across various disciplines presented at the AERA meeting on May 1, 2010. The article was available online on April 26, 2010.

On March 8, 2010, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) announced that Steve Benton, Senior Research Officer for The IDEA Center, was selected as a 2010 AERA Fellow.  
 
The purpose of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellows Program is to honor education researchers with substantial research accomplishments, to convey the Association’s commitment to excellence in research, and to enable the next generation of emerging scholars to appreciate the value of sustained achievements in research and the breadth of scholarship worthy of recognition. The Program is intended to recognize excellence in research and be inclusive of the scholarship that constitutes and enriches education research as an interdisciplinary field. 
 
Fellows are nominated by their peers, selected and recommended by the Fellows Committee, and approved by the AERA Council, the Association’s elected governing group.  
 
Congratulations to Dr. Benton and all the 2010 AERA Fellows!

Steve Benton, Senior Research Officer, recently published an article, along with his doctoral student, Jan Middendorf, in The Department Chair. (Middendorf, B. J. & Benton, S. L., "Trends in Chair Responsibilities," Fall 2009, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 23-25). They examined data collected from 1990 to 2007, using the IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs system. Results indicated that the importance chairs assigned to 15 responsibilities remained remarkably consistent across the years. In addition, chairs tended to receive the highest faculty ratings of their performance on the responsibilities chairs deemed most important. The strong relationship between chairs' ratings of importance and faculty ratings of performance supported the validity of The IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs system.

Congratulations to Pam Milloy at Grand View University who was a finalist for the POD Innovations Award at the 34th Annual Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education Conference for her work “Looking Beyond a Single Class:  A Tool for Extracting Themes and Trends in Student Evaluation Data.” Ms. Milloy, Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, developed an Excel worksheet that allows professors to synthesize IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction results from numerous courses and semesters.  Instructors then draw a manageable number of teaching methods and styles they might consider to enhance learning.  The simple worksheet has markedly increased the attention that faculty are giving to improving their teaching.

Unsure why your adjusted score goes up or down, or why they are even reported? In just 4 minutes this presentation answers questions on what drives the adjusted score, what it says about your students, and what it means to you. View the newly released video Understanding Adjusted Scores. Visit the Training menu to view all video titles and check back later to see new releases.  

Whether you need a refresher with IDEA Online, or simply would like to see what all the buzz is about, we invite you to view the IDEA Online Tutorial. This self paced tutorial is a practical guide that demonstrates the online system step-by-step. To set up an IDEA Online account or schedule a personal training session, please contact the Center at 800-255-2757. Click here for other IDEA Online resources.

The recent economic troubles our world faces are of concern to all of us. Recent news in higher education circles makes it abundantly clear that we are far from immune from these problems. In recognition that these difficult times will not be short lived, The IDEA Center pledges that it will not increase its rates for use of its student ratings system any earlier than July 1, 2011 (two and one-half years). 
 

Two new IDEA Papers have been published. Assessing Your Program-Level Plan by Susan Hatfield and The Learning Portfolio: A Powerful Idea for Significant Learning by John Zubizarreta provide useful ideas related to teaching in higher education. Previously published IDEA Papers are also available for download. Bookmark these valuable IDEA Papers or order a Full Set for your personal library.