The IDEA Center

Our Faculty Evaluation Task Force chose IDEA because with one tool we can get input for administrative decision making and ideas for faculty to use in teaching improvements. The diagnostic feedback has become the cornerstone for setting teaching goals for the upcoming year.

The Users Group Meeting is the most valuable conference to attend because of the interaction and sharing between participants and not so much of The IDEA Center teaching. They are facilitating the users to share best practices. Wonderful and useful!

As the faculty developer, I have found the individual reports an excellent starting place for conversations with faculty about teaching and learning.  We have been well satisfied not only with the feedback faculty receive on their individual reports, but also the support provided by the IDEA staff. 

The more we use IDEA the more we like it. IDEA is useful to evaluate and improve teaching effectiveness at multiple levels. We started using IDEA to help us evaluate and improve our instructors' teaching effectiveness, then to assess the effectiveness of our academic programs. 

Use of the IDEA Student Rating system has been a valuable facet of our increasing focus on student learning outcomes.  Having used IDEA for many years, their Instructor and Group Reports have provided us with information to continually improve our teaching and learning - at the classroom, discipline and institution levels.

With IDEA Online, we have been astonished at the ability to get feedback to instructors within two weeks of the end of classes, in time for them to make changes between semesters. Since we're evaluating roughly 450 classes per term, this is not a small thing!

The system is very user-friendly and the IDEA staff provides excellent customer service in all areas!   They frequently go “above and beyond” the call of duty in their support of the technical and reporting functions of the IDEA system.

IDEA Online collects IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction system responses through an online survey tool. Both the Diagnostic Form and Short Form are available through IDEA Online.

The following is a list of sample reports for Student Ratings of Instruction:

• Diagnostic Form Report
• Short Form Report
• Group Summary Reports

Copyright Notice: The survey instruments listed below are copyrighted by The IDEA Center, Inc. No part of the survey instruments or content may be adapted, duplicated or reprinted without prior written consent from The IDEA Center. Any such use will be viewed as copyright infringement and a violation of academic integrity. All rights reserved.
 
The following is a list of sample forms for the Student Ratings of Instruction system:

• Sample Faculty Information Form
• Sample Diagnostic Form
• Sample Short Form

The IDEA Center's research staff has conducted a variety of studies to advance our understanding of teaching and learning, and to improve the use and interpretation of information provided to IDEA users.

The follow are comparative data from three years of IDEA student ratings survey administration in 122 institutions of higher learning and 73,722 classes:

Benefits of the IDEA Student Ratings System:

• IDEA Center Experience and Expertise
• The Student Learning Model
• Faculty Input
• Diagnostics and Improvement
• Documented Validity and Reliability
• National Comparative Data
• Accounting for Extraneous Influences
• Group Summary Reports

Our institution has used the Student Rating System for over two decades, and has had good success with the transition to IDEA Online. As we have learned how to make the best use of the IDEA reports, faculty and department chairs gain consistent, appropriate, and meaningful feedback on teaching.

The following is the current pricing schedule for Student Ratings of Instruction in PDF format:

• Student Ratings of Instruction Fee Schedule