Council discusses ratings
March 14, 2008
Academic Affairs Committee chairman Tom Phillips opens discussion on a higher education bill during Thursday's Faculty Council meeting in Memorial Union. The new bill would require all public colleges and universities to create a student-accessible Web site that allows students to rate instructors by fall 2009.
(Click graphic to enlarge)
The MU Faculty Council considered proposed statements to which students would respond to evaluate instructors. Students’ responses to the statements would be placed on a student-accessible Web site, which is being created in accordance with an omnibus higher education bill passed early last year.
The act requires public universities to post students’ instructor ratings and that the data be available to students by the fall 2009 semester. How exactly the collection of data will occur and what the questions will be, though, is left up to each institution.
Academic Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Phillips presented the three statements for the Faculty Council to discuss after receiving input from other faculty.
All three statements instruct students to “indicate your level of agreement or disagreement.” Phillips said they decided not to use ratings such as “excellent” because students could have different interpretations of what an “excellent” or “average” a professor is.
“One issue that came up by several faculty was, You wrote excellent, good and average,” Phillips said. “What’s average? Students may be confused by that.”
According to the document presented to the council and revisions that were made during the meeting, the three statements students would use to rate instructors are: “The course content, including the lectures, syllabus, grading standards and student responsibilities, was presented clearly,” “the instructor was interested in student learning” and “considering both the possibilities and limitations of the subject matter and the course (including class size and classroom facilities), the instructor taught effectively.”
The council also discussed three issues involved with the process of collecting and presenting the data from students. One issue was with team-taught courses. The council decided courses “with three or more instructors would use a single-evaluation form for all instructors,” the proposed document stated. “This would be reported under the “instructor of record” listed in the course catalog with a notation that it reflected the composite ranking of all instructors in the class.”
Another process issue involved an indication of how many students completed the evaluation, and to include a disclaimer with data collected from class evaluations that receive a low response or courses that have low enrollments. Faculty Council member Jay Dow said he thought the number of students in the course should be included in addition to just a percentage of how many students completed the evaluation.
“I think students should know that there’s just a difference in the way that course is going to be taught, the approach and how to evaluate the instructor,” Dow said while talking about the difference in experience between a large and a small class and how evaluations are affected by it.
The final process issue that was discussed had to do with which semesters’ information would be posted online. Phillips said after rereading the legislation that the rating posted would be from the evaluation taken the last time the instructor taught that specific class.
The council will take up this issue again during the spring general faculty meeting. The council then has to finalize any changes and submit them to the MU administration, which makes the final decisions on the implementation of the system.
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