The IDEA Center

Faculty Instruction Sheet

A one-page instruction sheet is provided to the faculty, summarizing the important deadlines and administration guidelines (e.g., instructor leaving the room while students are completing the surveys). The Teaching and Learning Center serves as the single point of contact for IDEA, which helps facilitate responses to questions about administering the surveys and interpreting the results.

Student Instructions

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.

Faculty Communication

Throughout the semester, faculty members receive e-mail newsletters (done on a listserv) from IR with important information about upcoming IDEA deadlines, changes, reminders, etc. Early in the semester, an introductory e-mail informs faculty about this practice and the importance of opening the e-mails (the e-mail subject line reads "We Have an IDEA for You: [insert specific topic]". In the message body, we use a special header in ASU colors (example attached).

Preparing Materials

Early in the semester we get class enrollment counts from IT and then send them to department heads and their secretaries as spreadsheets sent via e-mail to have them check them for accuracy. In mid-semester we send FIF's with instructions to department secretaries, who distribute them to faculty. They collect them and return them to IR where we (The "we" in all of this is the IR secretary and our student worker) make packets as time allows. In mid-to-late November, we hand-deliver all the packets to the department secretaries for distribution to faculty. As faculty complete packets, secretaries or trusted student workers bring the packets back to us. We offer to do bulk pick-ups from any department who wants pick-up service. During finals week (when the greatest amount of pick-ups are occurring), we also take a holiday card with our slogan, "We count on your support" and a "little something" such as a candy cane to each department secretary.

Shipping

The IR secretary organizes the packets of evaluations alphabetically by college, by department, and by professor as they come in (she uses 1-2 large paper boxes for each college with dividers labeled by department). When she packs to ship, it's easy to then divide out Diagnostic Forms from Short Forms. She keeps the empty packets in the same order so that when the reports come back, they can be re-stuffed into the already labeled packets. Also, the cardboard IDEA uses as dividers between files when shipping to us, is recycled when forms are shipped back. We've used the same dividers MULTIPLE times back and forth to IDEA.

Tracking Courses / Distributing Materials

The IDEA system is administered from the Academic Affairs Office. Information on faculty status is maintained in a database shared by two administrative assistants. As a result, faculty can be advised if they need to evaluate all courses in a given year. Faculty return information on preferences for short and diagnostic forms, which is then linked to information from our institutional database. This provides the number of forms needed based on official student enrollment in the class. This information then used to generate a label with the instructor’s name, the course title and appropriate code, and the number of forms and of which type. The administrative assistant assembles the packages of student and faculty forms and directions, all of which are placed in bright red multiple-use envelopes. (This keeps them from getting lost on faculty desks!) As soon as completed forms begin to come in, the administrative assistant who supervises this process notes their return, keeping track of all evaluations still outstanding. She also checks the completion of the Faculty Information Form and reviews the completed headers on all student forms.

Pencils

A student assistant counts out and bags an appropriate number of half-length pencils in reusable “zip-loc” bags (one bag per teacher using the highest class attendance of his/her courses).

Timing of Distribution

Distributed through faculty post office boxes about four weeks before the end of the semester, with packages available earlier for those who wish to use them.

Returning Surveys

Several years ago, our carpenter shop constructed a wheeled cabinet with two “slots” on the front and two large storage areas into which these empty. One side is for completed evaluations, the other for bags of pencils. This sits outside the Academic Affairs Office during the evaluation period, and is wheeled in at the close of office hours. Students are directed by their instructors to return the completed packets and pencils to the appropriate location.

Transcribing Comments

As soon as forms are returned, the administrative assistant begins typing any student comments written on the IDEA forms. Since many faculty now use additional sheets which we provide for comments, we can type these separate comments after completing those on the forms themselves. This enables us to get the forms ready for processing sooner. We prefer to type student comments to maintain the anonymity of the students. So far we have been successful and the volume of comments has increased dramatically. Faculty have commented that they find this information particularly interesting and useful. By the time forms have been returned from The IDEA Center with the reports, the typing of comments on the separate sheets has usually been completed, often times with the help of additional typists.

Distribution of Reports

Reports and comments are assembled and sent to the instructor, with a separate bound volume (usually two volumes!) of reports for review by the Dean. One copy is retained for the faculty member’s file, as well. The entire run of student comments is also bound, and like the bound volume of IDEA reports, is organized alphabetically by instructor.