REPORT
OF THE COURSE EVALUATION COMMITTEE
The Course
Evaluation Committee was formed by AUFA in September 2001, and consisted of
Vernon Provencal (Classics, chair), Soren Bondrup-Nielsen (Biology), Miriam
Cooley (Education), Roberto Segado (Engineering); as of January 2002, Tanja
Harrison (Library) and Jeff Britton (ASU) were
invited to join.
The mandate of the Committee was to
create a core uniform course evaluation form that would serve all three
faculties. The need
for such a form was based on the recommendations of the Course Evaluation
Committee of the previous year as a result of negotiations on Article 15.55.
As of January 30, 2002, the Course
Evaluation Committee arrived at the following:
on drafting a tetra-partite (4 parts) SECURE form available both online (completed at a single site, but results are sent to different parties) and in hard copy (multi-colour serrated document accompanied with multi-colour envelopes.)
1)
Forwarded to Senior Administration: two questions in the 10th Collective
Agreement, Article 15.55 and Article 15 Appendix III– (we might revisit
the language they are using to contextualize the questions).
2) Forwarded to Departmental Heads for Annual
Career Development Meeting Report (Article 15.62, Article 15
Appendix I—note the language of 15.62: "the Career Development Meeting
shall include all documentation or information the faculty member or Head deems
necessary, including but not limited to information pertaining to
teaching activities inside and outside the classroom and all student course
evaluations.")
These questions will be used by the Department
Heads to assess the performance of the Instructor and to prepare their Annual
Career Development report. They will also be used to determine the viability of
the course and all aspects pertaining to the course (texts, subject matter,
scope, etc.)
These questions should be as objective as possible
and the most quantifiable; these are aimed at evaluation of past performance,
and are not the sort of questions used for self-critique and for
self-improvement.
3) Confidential to Instructors for
Self-Evaluation and Improvement.
These questions must be confidential and aimed
toward the constructive criticism of an Instructor, with a view to self-improvement.
As such, they are bound to be more subjective and, since they are by nature
eliciting negative feedback by way of critique, would be more subject to
misinterpretation if used for evaluation of past performance.
4) Student Course Recommendation forwarded to ASU to aid student course selection. There
should be no questions on the Instructor per se (i.e. no opportunity for
anonymous slander/vendetta). Basically, students are gathering info on the
reputation of x-course as taught by x-prof to aid
student selection of courses.
The Committee decided to proceed on two bases:
a) by collecting and comparing evaluation forms
currently used in all three faculties (while pure and applied science and
professional studies each had single faculty-wide forms, the arts generally had
different forms in different departments);
the various questions were then reduced to basic categories and basic
questions, where it was easy to see that there was indeed a considerable degree
of uniformity underlying the variety of questions;
b) by researching course evaluations, with a view to arriving at a ‘best practice’ basis for the core evaluation form. The most useful document we found was the "Final Report, Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Student Course Evaluations" (University of Wisconsin); we also contacted John Centra, an expert on course evaluations from Syracuse University, for a professional opinion on the evaluation form.
With respect to the interpretation of results of the Course Evaluations,
the Committee decided that,
a) for each category, the analysis will consist of calculating the median and the frequency distribution;
b) the Instructor, the Head, the ASU and the Administration will receive the Median and the
Frequency Distribution for the relevant questions;
c) in addition, the Instructor will receive all the raw data.
The Course Evaluation Committee completed its work by producing a core uniform Course Evaluation Form and presenting it to the Executive for comment and approval. As such, it is the recommendation of the Committee that the Course Evaluation Form be circulated among the general membership, along with the following Notice of Motion for the AGM on April 8, 2002.
Vernon Provencal (Chair)
Addendum
Dr. John Centra,
professor Emeritus at Syracuse University and renowned expert on course
evaluations, has endorsed the AUFA Course Evaluation Form.
Dr. Centra was also a
consultant to the Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Student Course Evaluations (University
of Wisconsin,) aforementioned in this report, and which the AUFA Course
Evaluation Committee used during the process.
The Appendix to this Addendum is a record of
correspondence with John Centra on the AUFA Course
Evaluation Form to date, including his endorsement. He has supplied further
advice, and after Faculty review, fine-tuning of the AUFA Course Evaluation
Form is anticipated.
Tanja Harrison