New Student Experience Survey Evaluation System Launches on Norman Campus
This semester, the University of Oklahoma Norman campus is implementing a new instrument to contribute to the evaluation of teaching.
OU is one of the first schools in the nation to develop a new evidence-backed instrument to replace the decades-old Student Teaching Evaluation (STE) survey. The new Student Experience Survey (SES) is now the official end-of-course student survey on the OU Norman Campus.
The design, development, and testing of this new tool has been three years in the making. In 2019, the Norman campus Provost’s Office and the Faculty Senate formed the Teaching Evaluation Working Group (TEWG), a multidisciplinary team of faculty and administrators, to conduct research on new and more effective ways to evaluate teaching at OU.
The team began designing the new instrument in 2020, going through extensive pilot tests in summer 2020 and spring 2021. After each pilot semester, both faculty and students in the selected courses were surveyed and their input used in the subsequent revision. The instrument has also been vetted by the administration and other stakeholders.
Keri Kornelson, OU mathematics professor and Faculty Senate chair, serves as the TEWG’s chairperson. Speaking for the TEWG, Kornelson said the group was formed after both students and faculty expressed dissatisfaction with the former evaluation instrument.
“We saw a growing body of evidence that revealed that traditional STEs, such as the one we were using at OU, are susceptible to bias and are not correlated with student learning,” she said. “This means that the professors whose students learn the most, who are doing the work of adapting their courses to use techniques proven to enhance learning, might not necessarily get the highest evaluations. This is particularly true if that professor is a woman or is from a systemically marginalized group.”
Studies have shown the older STEs are not aligned with student learning, don’t provide actionable feedback, and aren’t well-adapted to hybrid or online courses.
According to Kornelson, the new experience survey is designed to ask students concrete questions about their classroom experiences, giving them a chance to reflect on their courses and offer more effective feedback, targeted in a way that gives instructors the kind of information they can use to assess their course and improve it. The free response prompts are also used to direct students toward giving relevant and actionable input to their instructors.
The new survey aligns with the OU Norman campus’ “Lead On, University” Strategic Plan, which supports professional development, innovation and teaching excellence at all levels, while developing fair and rigorous metrics for evaluating teaching effectiveness and rewarding and promoting outstanding performance.
“The ultimate goal of the TEWG,” Kornelson said, “is to use the department-level teaching evaluation process to create a culture that encourages development of teaching skills and rewards the use of evidence-based effective teaching practices. We believe a robust annual evaluation of instructors will use input from students, the instructor’s own reflections, and other discipline-specific sources of information. We emphasize that the SES is not designed to directly evaluate an instructor’s teaching, but rather is one source of information that should be used in conjunction with an instructor’s goals and responses to the feedback.”
It’s hoped that students will see the new Student Experience Survey as a platform on which they can share their personal experiences and feedback to help improve future courses.
In a communication sent to OU students on the Norman campus in December, the Office of the Provost encouraged students to participate in the SES for their courses: “The information you provide is unique – your thoughts are needed to understand the effectiveness of the class. Better courses enhance the value of your OU degree. The Student Experience Survey also provides information that helps OU highlight and reward excellent teaching, while also helping the university identify where improvements are needed.”
Find more information about the new Student Experience Survey here and about the TEWG here.
By Jerri Culpepper
Article Published: Wednesday, February 23, 2022