2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Redesigning the Course and Teacher Ratings: Methods, Outcomes, and Lessons Learned

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 4

Less than one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the provost and faculty union leadership at a midsized private university agreed that the time was right for a reevaluation of the student evaluation of teaching (SET) process and policy. A university-wide Blue Ribbon Committee was formed to evaluate simultaneously the SET and the peer observation processes and policies and to make recommendations as appropriate. The committee researched and compared “name-of” University (U) standards and processes to peer and aspirant institutions, as well as best practices to prevent bias in responses from students.

The initial meeting of the Committee occurred on December 17, 2020 with members representing each of the schools at the University as well as the offices of the Provost and Institutional Research. Our diverse committee agreed on three guiding principles (a) Update the CTR to make it a more useful instrument for faculty development; (b) Include items that capture student perceptions of class climate; (c) Broaden the scope of teaching behaviors assessed to reflect the broad range of course structures and effective teaching styles of our faculty.

To date, the committee has assessed, revised, proposed, and piloted questions for the CTRs. The committee has also tested numerous roll-out plans to optimize student response. The outcomes, results, and lessons learned from these efforts will be shared in this paper.

Authors

S. Stavros Valenti Hofstra University
Kevin Patrick Nolan Hofstra University
Dr. Lynn A. Albers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1436-0256 Hofstra University [biography]

Dr. Lynn Albers is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering of the Fred DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science at Hofstra University. Her previous academic contribution was as one of the founding five faculty/staff at Campbell University, helping the newly formed School of Engineering grow and establish roots in the community. A proponent of Hands-On Activities in the classroom and during out-of-school time programs, she believes that they complement any teaching style thereby reaching all learning styles. She earned her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University specializing in thermal sciences where her dissertation research spanned three colleges and focused on Engineering Education. Her passions include but are not limited to Engineering Education, Energy Engineering and Conservation, and K-20 STEM Outreach. Prior to matriculating at NCSU, she worked at the North Carolina Solar Center developing a passion for wind and solar energy research while learning renewable energy policy. She combined these passions with K-20 STEM Outreach while a National Science Foundation Fellow with the GK-12 Outreach Program at NCSU where she began Energy Clubs, an out-of-school-time program for third, fourth and fifth graders to introduce them to renewable energy.

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