STUDENT ASSESSMENT OF TEACHING PROCESS AND POLICIES

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY
Originated February 23, 1998

Student assessment is an essential component of the process of improving and evaluating teaching. This document describes two types of input collected from students: quantitative responses to an assessment instrument and written responses to open-ended questions. Policies concerning administration of student assessment of teaching and uses of the information collected are described after explanations of the two input types.

I. The Student Assessment of Teaching Instrument

Meaningful discussion of student assessment of teaching is largely dependent upon the particular instrument in use. The process described in this section is based on the "Cafeteria" instrument published by Purdue University, which is the instrument currently in use by the College of Business. The choice of instrument and certain details of its implementation are subject to periodic review as described below.

The Cafeteria instrument is based on the concept of item selection. That is, the faculty (collectively and individually) decide which items will appear on the forms that the students complete. The items for individual courses and sections may differ as described below. The Cafeteria instrument has the flexibility to reflect a wide array of teaching facets, allowing for the selection of assessment items that are appropriate for almost any course and teaching style. The Cafeteria instrument also has the capability to provide percentile rankings of individual course sections against appropriate normative groups as well as statistics for the individual course sections.

Selection of Items for Instrument

The current implementation of the Cafeteria instrument provides for up to four categories of items, which are normally selected in the following sequence:

1. College-wide items that appear on the assessment forms for every course section in the College of Business. These are normally selected at the time of instrument review as described in the next section.
   
   
2. Faculty in each department may select items to be required of all courses taught in the department. Up to five items are suggested, with the selection/approval process at the discretion of the respective department chairs. Changes to departmentally determined items may be made as often as deemed appropriate by the department.
   
   
3. Faculty teaching multiple-section courses may select items to be required for all sections of the respective course. Up to five items are suggested, with the selection/approval process at the discretion of the respective course coordinators.
   
   
4. Each faculty member may also select additional items for his or her course sections and may change those items each evaluation period. The Cafeteria instrument is currently limited to a maximum of 45 items including college items, department items, course items, and items selected by the individual faculty member.

Periodic Review of Assessment Instrument

The College of Business student assessment of teaching instrument should be reviewed one year after its initial implementation, and thereafter no less often than every five years. The review should be undertaken sooner if conditions warrant. The following steps should be accomplished for each review cycle:

1. The review process will be initiated by the College of Business Dean, who will normally appoint a committee to implement the review process.
   
   
2. The committee should utilize input obtained from various stakeholders to consider the adequacy of the current student assessment of teaching instrument for providing feedback for teaching improvement and for administrative purposes, as compared to other instruments that might be developed or are available. If the committee determines that no changes are necessary, the committee should file a report to that effect with the Dean.
   
   
3. In the case of the Cafeteria or any similar instrument, the committee should review the adequacy and suitability of the college-wide items. Appropriate recommendations should be made, subject to approval by the dean and the faculty as described in the policies section below.
   
   
4. In the case of the Cafeteria or any similar instrument, the committee should also review the suitability of established normative groups for comparing data and make appropriate recommendations. If no normative groups have been established, the committee should arrange for them to be established.

   II. Written Comments from Students

Because no set of standardized assessment items can fully address all aspects of teaching effectiveness, written comments from students provide an important additional source of meaningful information. Written comments are normally solicited at the same time that the assessment instrument is administered. Responses may be collected in a space provided on the assessment instrument or on separate forms (or blank paper) provided for that purpose. Each department's faculty may agree upon standard questions or items for written response by students. In the absence of standard departmental questions or items, individual faculty may develop their own.

III. Policies for Administration and Data Interpretation

1. Student assessment of teaching will be conducted in compliance with the document AStudent Evaluation of Faculty@ or other superseding document(s) published by the university administration.
   
   
2. The College of Business Dean's Office will arrange for development, maintenance, and dissemination of standardized procedures for administering the student assessment of teaching instrument.
   
   
3. Faculty will be encouraged to conduct student assessment of teaching in every semester. At a minimum, each faculty member in the College of Business must conduct student assessment of teaching with the currently-approved assessment instrument in every regular course section taught in either the fall or spring semester each academic year. The department chair may require assessments to be conducted in a particular semester and may require additional assessments in individual course sections so that every course taught by a given faculty member receives at least one assessment each academic year. In such cases, faculty will be informed of additional student assessment requirements prior to the beginning of the respective semester.
   
   
4. Summary results from the required assessments must be included with the faculty member's Annual Report in accordance with the current Annual Report Directions. The results of assessments in additional semesters or course sections as well as written comments may be reported at the faculty member's discretion.
   
   
5. Any change to the college-wide assessment items will require approval of the dean and a simple majority of all college faculty (full-time and part-time) who vote on the issue.
   
   
6. Each faculty member will be encouraged to include open-ended questions that allow students to express in their own words their opinions about the instruction received. At the faculty member's option, the resulting written responses may be presented verbatim and/or in summary form in the faculty member=s Annual Report.
   
   
7. Results of each faculty member=s student assessments will be made available to the individual and his or her department chair as soon as possible after the end of the respective semester. When feasible, summary data of College of Business, departmental, and multiple-section course items will be reported to the faculty member.
   
   
8. Faculty will be strongly encouraged to use the results from student assessment of teaching to make improvements in their courses. Faculty will also be encouraged to document such improvements in the applicable Annual Report.
   
   
9. Realizing that any process by which students assess faculty is not completely objective, faculty and administrators will follow these guidelines when using the results of student assessments as input for faculty evaluation and personnel decisions:

• Make only identical item comparisons among faculty who are within the same norm groups.

• Interpret percentile ranks in broad ranges, such as quartiles. Small differences between percentile rankings should be ignored.

• Consider actual values along with percentiles, since high scores across the group on a particular item could result in a low percentile rank in spite of high individual scores.

• Consider written responses from students as equally important to numeric statistics from instrument items.

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