Our campus is in a transition year as we move from diverse systems of course evaluation to a single online system as decided by the Senate several years ago. This fall we are running a large pilot of the software system developed specifically for this project. Essentially, all courses from College Park and the Shady Grove courses offered by College Park that began on or after the standard fall term start date and will end on or before the standard fall term end date will be evaluated using this new online system. Exceptions to this are courses with fewer than 5 students and potentially courses such as internships and dissertation credits if your department scheduler tags them as not to be evaluated.*

Faculty will be able to see the results for fall evaluation of their courses online after the online grade submission deadline in January. They will be able to access results to all 15 items. Student access to the results of a specific sub-set of items by course is permitted if a student completes all of his or her evaluations for fall and if at least 70% of students registered in the given course completed their evaluation of it. Administrators will see results of the eight administrative-use items but not the seven student-use items.

For this fall the evaluation, dubbed CourseEvalUM, will include only the

 15 University-wide items. These items were developed by various Senate Task Forces (including faculty, staff, and students) and an Advisory Group (whose membership was appointed by the deans, SGA, and GSG), routed by the Provost to all faculty for feedback,

  approved by the Senate, and have been statistically evaluated. By fall 2008 the system will have the capacity for multiple blocks of items, including the 15 University-wide items, and another 25 item slots that can be used by a college or school, its affiliated departments, and its individual faculty. So, for instance, a college could add 15 items of its own, allowing departments 5 items and faculty 5 items.

The CourseEvalUM system will be open from Tuesday, November 27 through Wednesday, December 12.

We are asking for help from faculty and instructors: 1) Please remind your students during this time frame to check their official University email accounts, as that is where we will send notification asking their participation in the CourseEvalUM system. Several reminders in class and on course listservs would be beneficial. There is campus evidence that more reminders and faculty enthusiasm increase student participation. 2) Additionally, if your department is using a back-up system for this transition year in order to collect data that cannot be captured in the current 15-item pilot, then please make sure students know that both evaluations are important, why they are both important during this phase-in of new and phase-out of old, and acknowledge that their individual participation in both is critical to the transition year. We need your help in individual classes to support the process.*

More information about the new system, including additional links to a faculty and administrator page, a student page, a demo page, more information on courses that may not be evaluated this fall, the list of evaluation items and drop-in language for your online syllabi and course listservs can be found at: https://www.irpa.umd.edu/Assessment/
crs_eval.shtml