The IDEA Center

Form Type: Short Form
Areas of Best Practice: Faculty Evaluation, Faculty Buy-In and Teaching Improvement, Logistics.

Faculty Evaluation

Administratively, we use IDEA for personnel recommendations (through our RTP process) almost exclusively. However, faculty who have successfully navigated their way through to tenure and promotion use IDEA for improving their classroom performance, teaching methodologies, and for insight. As it turns out, the objectivity provided by IDEA feedback is a very good "viewpoint" that faculty might not otherwise have an opportunity to see.

Starting in 1983 we began using an in-house quantitative form, which was barely adequate to our needs. As our institutional understanding of the importance of student ratings evolved, it became apparent to us that a nationally normed evaluation tool would accomplish at least two important goals. First, we would stop competing only with each other since IDEA pits our performances against everyone in the national database. This has allowed us to use our higher than average teaching scores to justify requests for more faculty and more resources. Second, and for the first time in our 75-year history, we were able to objectively assess teaching for purposes of retention, tenure and promotion of our faculty. Since we are primarily a teaching institution, our students are our most important product. Thus, their experiences are paramount to our own identity.

Faculty Buy-In and Teaching Improvement

New faculty who are unfamiliar with IDEA are apprehensive. They see potential for abuse of the instrument and an over-reliance on "the numbers." Each new faculty member is carefully briefed on the instrument and their control over outcomes. While we explain that IDEA scores are only one of many measures (i.e., examination of course outlines and syllabi, course materials, student open-ended surveys, and peer evaluations), it is the actual use of IDEA over the tenure probationary period that illustrates to faculty the real value of the instrument. By using the recommendations afforded by the IDEA analysis, individual faculty are able to formulate changes in their classroom behavior and course structure that have tangible results in next semesters scores. Thus, we have young faculty members who start with low scores and, through considered management of their classes, are able to establish an upward trend toward excellent teaching. Among those who take teaching seriously, this happens almost every time. Within two years, these folks are feeling enabled and confident. They become advocates of IDEA and serve as mentors as they move into senior status.

After about 12 years of using IDEA, we can honestly say it has become an integral part of our culture. Recently, our central administration has made some indications that they would like to see the entire campus using some form of objective student evaluation that would be comparable to other universities.

Logistics

We advise faculty to pay close attention to the elements of their classes that they want to emphasize. Indicating these correctly on the instructor form always results in more valid assessment. Students are given clear instructions about the institutional importance of their honest reflections on their form — that their impressions are important to us and will be used to evaluate their instructors' overall performance. One way to reduce student resistance to filling out the forms is to ensure that course evaluations are completed during the week before finals. Putting some time between final exams and evaluations decreases the number of blank forms, and seems to assure students that their evaluations will be reviewed in confidence. We also do not allow instructors to be present during evaluations and appoint a student from each class to be responsible for delivering the sealed evaluation packet to our offices.