Student Rating Review Team

Great list! It might be worth noting availability during office hours (and beyond?).

Second point, I like enthusiasm for course or material or maybe in general. It could be a separate item from engaging.

I think one thing to add to the student section might be, "Did you clearly/thoroughly read the syllabus for this course?"

Understanding that may shed light on how students are responding to certain questions about Instructor characteristics.

I am strongly opposed to online course evaluations. Online evaluations will be a self selected sample. Instead of reflecting all student opinion, it will only reflect the opinion of students motivated enough to respond online. It would be worthless as a measure of student opinion unless we are willing to say we don't care about the opinion of any student who doesn't fill it out online.

I know of one university where the online approach has been tried with very bad results (low response rate reflecting only the most extreme opinions).

I think the committee is currently on the right track with not expanding the number of questions and moving to online. As far as online evaluations, the fact is that students can sit in the room right now and not actually fill it out (I always have substantially fewer evaluations completed than students who were present). On the other hand, I also do an online survey that is 10X as long and gets > 90% response rate every semester from > 100 students. Offer them a couple of points and it will get done (and it is a part of the class, so the points are easy to justify). it takes very little to motivate students to finish them, and the feedback is vastly more useful and detailed. I had this work at another university that implemented official online evaluations, even when I couldn't see which students had responded. I was able to see what % of the class had responded, and told the class that everyone would get the points if more than 90% responded. I got 98% one semester.

I think all the proposals to add questions regarding student engagement (did you read the syllabus, try to actually go to office hours, how much time did you put in, etc.) are worthwhile things to track, and I do that on my own survey. But they do not need to part of the official university evaluation form, as it is not at all clear to me how those values would be used except by the individual instructor. (For example, does a high average of hours outside of class reflect poor teaching, or good motivation of students? Maybe low average hours reflects an introductory course that many students already know a substantial fraction of the information, but to raise it would penalize the less well-prepared students. How does someone reviewing your scores tell the difference without adding even more questions?)

Also please think through how responses to a question can actually be used. Some of the current questions are not useful in that it is not clear what do in response to a lower score. For example, the question on communication: if it is particularly low in one section, was it that the room was noisy, the time meant the students weren't awake, that I was tired from already teaching that day, that I should speak louder, or.....? It identifies a potential problem without in any way suggesting an appropriate solution, and few students bother to elobarate without a specific open-ended prompt.

However, I do have one suggestion: please arrange to test the questions (new or old) with real students to see how they interpret them. I'm sure that some of our current questions are not read by the students in the way they are intended, and so it's not clear to me how to use the resulting responses. For example, the clarity & match of course objectives. My score in those questions invariably go down the more I emphasize the extensive objectives I provide to them and very explicitly match content to. I've talked to other instructors who have seen similar effects. I also suspect that "availability for office hours" is often read to mean "availability whenever I happen to pass by" because many students never bother to learn my office hours but do come frequently.

My only comment involves the potential question about instructor's use of technology. Personally, I do not think technology automatically equates to better teaching. Also, many courses, such as music or fine arts, might not lend themselves to taking advantage to the technology offered to faculty. I fear students will simply boil this down to "Does the faculty member record all of my grades for me on Bb?" If such a question MUST be used, perhaps "Does this instructor's use of technology enhance my learning in this course." But I would still advocate that as one of the optional/personalized questions spoken of in the discussion. Overall I am very happy to see this review being done and think the ideas are very good. I agree with a previous comment about testing a student audience for their interpretation of the questions.

I have issues with "The instructor motivated me to learn." First, instructors are not motivational speakers.

Second, Xavier students should have internalized motivation by the time they graduate, else we have failed to prepare them for the job market. Putting this question on the evaluation sheet gives students the idea that it is their instructors responsibility to motivate them, rather than their responsibility to motivate themselves. At the college level, this is counterproductive to the learning process.

Third, it is unclear what the appropriate response would be for an instructor receiving a low score on this question. Be more entertaining? Give stirring life sermons during class? Adopt a codependent attitude toward student learning? Grade based on effort rather than knowledge?

On an unrelated note in response to a previous comment, I think that awarding students extra credit for filling out these forms is a very bad idea. Awarding bonus points undermines objectivity, and telling the instructor who did and did not respond before grades are assigned would undermine student confidence in the process.

The first question (The
instructor was available for consultation) needs to be qualified. Students often expect faculty to be available all day, every day, including weekends, nights and vacations. I would like to see "during office hours or by appointment" added.

General comments: I think online evals are great (as a student who did them). As it stands, only about 50% the class fills out paper evals and only 50% of the feedback is actually useful (I once received a drawing of a turkey).
Instructor Questions:
1. I like this statement as for many of us, office hours have to be flexible.
2, 3, 8: maybe make these more specific and related to something (the course calendar or the syallbus, etc...). As it stands, I think these are hard to measure as just general statements.
4-7: Again I think these just need to be reworked a little. (ex. "The instructor demonstrated respect for the students in the class" vs. "The instructor respected students as individuals."
Q8: "The instructor made the material relatable...." or something of that nature.

I feel rewording some of these questions will better capture the nature of our profession which is to present material to students so they may learn it vs. force feed material into students minds.

Also, for the instructor questions, many courses are team-taught so it may be more appropriate to change "course" to "material" or something of that nature.

Course questions:
"enhanced my learning" - what are we trying to capture? Is this the most appropriate statement to evaluate materials, syllabi, etc... "Did the material contribute to understanding/achievement of course objectives?"
"Were course objectives achievable?"
As a professor/instructor/coordinator for courses, I want to know if what I taught them helped them achieve the course outcomes.
And did the outcomes make sense?

Student questions:
in the what grade section:
Add pass or fail for those courses and get rid of unsure. Again this goes back to what are we measuring. If a student says unsure, and they leave a great vs. poor review what does that tell us?

Q2: This may be a double-barreled question, asking about timeliness of feedback AND whether it helped students learn. If it's going to cover both issues, perhaps it be worded more explicitly, "provided feedback that was both timely and helpful to my learning." The current wording tacks on helpfulness.

Kudos on getting rid of the "compared to other professors" question. I also like the rewording on improvements.

I like the comment above re rewording the respect questions to "demonstrated respect for students."