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Dubbed CourseEvalUM by student leaders promoting the project with Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment (IRPA), the Senate-requested online course evaluation system was launched in the fall. The data collection system, results reporting, and access authorization systems are being built and piloted this year and next. Students completed 63%—or about 84,000—of the approximately 135,000 course evaluations on campus last semester, a terrific initial response given the challenges experienced. Some colleges had over 70% of their evaluations completed, even when their in-house traditional system was still in place during the fall pilot.
The development of this project is very intense
and is requiring lots of cooperation and support from the campus
community as it is built and tested. Thank you for your patience and
support! When all is completed, however, the final package should
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"... Some colleges had over 70% of their evaluations completed,
even when their in-house traditional system was still in place
during the fall pilot..."
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provide Maryland with a state of the art system tailor-made to
meet the varying evaluation needs of the colleges on campus.
Throughout winter break and January the OIT programmer with the project created and tested the reporting and access systems and they were tested further in IRPA. By early February, instructors, administrators and students had access to the various results reports online, depending on their system access. Once the system is fully developed, the results should be available once the UMEG online grade submission deadline passes for each term.
A number of years ago CTE-Lilly Fellows suggested an online
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evaluation system to the University Senate, as did SGA student leaders.
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"...This semester's key enhancement is the added ability to
have more than one person per course identified as a person to
evaluate. We are calling this the “multiple instructor”
capability." |
While the Fellows and the SGA had somewhat different reasons for wanting such a system, and its authorization was granted only after much Senate debate, the overall hope is to provide the campus with a consistent way of evaluating courses at the University level while at the same time providing flexibility among colleges and departments to include their own survey items and student access to limited results. It's exciting that the system will be able to support a more uniform way of examining areas of strength and areas for improvement of teaching and learning but at the same time assist departments, colleges, and even instructors in knowing more local information about their courses and how they are meeting student needs. Students, instructors and administrators have expressed positive views of the results reports, while at the same time offering timely suggestions for improvements as the system is developed.
This semester's key enhancement is the added ability to have more than one person per course identified as a person to evaluate. We are calling this the “multiple instructor” capability because it will, for example, allow two faculty members who co-teach a course to both have evaluation results. In the fall the system could only provide evaluation results to one of the instructors and students were asked only one set of questions per course. The system will now allow identification of items that
are specific to an instructor (e.g., The instructor treated students
with respect) that can be asked of students about each instructor as
well as items more specific to a course
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asked only once per course (e.g., The course was intellectually
challenging), all asked through a single course evaluation in a
student's Evaluation Dashboard. This mechanism can be utilized when
the course scheduler for a department or college makes a change in SIS
to indicate if more than one person should be evaluated and who those
persons should be, whether a co-instructor or TA. This indication must
be completed by April 7th for spring evaluations. We anticipate
eventually a TA could be evaluated in a
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" Future enhancements will include the ability for colleges,
departments and instructors to add items of interest. This
feature, called the “hierarchy system” because it allows
various levels of items to be added, will pilot tested in a
future term. "
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somewhat different way, allowing students to answer questions about the TA that are different than those answered about an instructor, but for now the items for both the TA, instructor of record and any co-instructor will be the same given the system capacities to date.
Future enhancements will include the ability for colleges, departments and instructors to add items of interest. This feature, called the “hierarchy system” because it allows various levels of items to be added, will pilot tested in a future term. Eventually, an instructor, college, or department could even use the system to develop and launch other types of surveys or evaluations, say at mid-semester to see how things are proceeding or at the start of the term to get a sense of what capacities students bring to a course.
Again, your support and patience as the system is built and tested is much appreciated! |
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