The IDEA Center

Form Type: Diagnostic Form
Areas of Best Practice: Faculty Buy-In, Teaching Improvement and Faculty Evaluation, and Accreditation and Planning.

Faculty Buy-In

Southwestern College takes the scholarship of teaching seriously. One reflection of our disposition as educators can be found in our handbook requirement to undertake regular course evaluations. In accordance with this requirement, teaching effectiveness is assessed every semester. The assessment tool that we have chosen is the IDEA system and it was selected because it is centered on the principles for best practice. Although we are only in our second year with IDEA, implementation of the system has been easy. Indeed, Southwestern College faculty members are asked to assess one major course and one general education course. Within those boundaries, instructors may evaluate any course of their choosing. There are a number of reasons for this strategy but they include: 1. The extra flexibility allows faculty members to feel that they have some ownership of the evaluation beyond the institutional requirement. 2. By selectively assessing, we avoid over-surveying the students. 3. The smaller number of surveys holds down cost. The upshot of this approach has been positive, and both the faculty and the administration appear to be pleased. Perhaps the best testament for our implementation of IDEA is that there appears to be only one dissenting voice out of about 58 faculty members. And, the one negative vote is willing to experiment further with the IDEA system.

Teaching Improvement and Faculty Evaluation

Implementing surveys is only one half of the assessment game. The other half is acting on the results. The inclination of the current administration is to use IDEA to improve instruction at Southwestern College. To this end, faculty members are free to include their evaluation reports in a much larger portfolio that is submitted for both regular evaluation and promotion. By giving IDEA a small role in the overall evaluation process we are able to ensure that instructors are free to examine their reports without fear of punishment in case of low scores. Moreover, by offering faculty members a chance to ‘show off’ their teaching skills in a portfolio, we are providing them with an avenue to set their IDEA results in context and to generate some thoughtful reflection.

The IDEA results that we examine come to us in a variety of ways. At present, we receive individual instructor reports, batch [group] summary reports for the various programs on campus, and an institutional report. The individual instructor reports are distributed to three different parties. One copy is returned to the faculty member, a second copy is provided to the relevant division chair, and a third copy is retained in the Academic Dean’s office. Perhaps the most important link is the second. In order to ensure some degree of accountability among the faculty, the division chairs are empowered to act as ‘coaches’ for faculty members whose reports indicate an area where improvement is needed.

Accreditation and Planning

The division chairs also receive a copy of the batch [group] summary reports. In time, we expect that the data generated from IDEA will help with both strategic planning and programming decisions. Finally, the Academic Dean’s office looks at the Institutional Summary in connection with other assessment tools to determine overall teaching effectiveness and the faithfulness to the teaching mission of the college.