Teaching Evaluation Working Group

Overview

The Teaching Evaluation Working Group (TEWG) was established in January 2019 by the Office of the Provost and the Faculty Senate for Norman campus. 

The Faculty Senate Faculty Welfare Committee and the Office of the Provost charged the Teaching Evaluation Working Group with assessing and improving course evaluations and the faculty teaching evaluation process to reduce biases and improve actionability, with the goal of improving teaching, learning, and equity. 

Towards this goal, the TEWG has been working to:

• Create new instruments that may include, but are not limited to, instruments for student evaluation, peer evaluation, and self-evaluation of teaching.
• Gather feedback on new processes or tools from stakeholders including students, faculty, instructors, Chairs and Committees A, Deans, the Office of the Provost, the Center for Faculty Excellence, teaching awards committees, and the Office of Access and Opportunity.
• Pilot new instruments to collect student’s feedback about courses, then gather and analyze feedback and data from departments, faculty, and students.  Perform an analysis of gender and race bias in the traditional and experimental evaluations.

Membership

• Aaron Biggs, Associate Provost for Academic Technology
• Karen Hennes, Associate Professor and Director of School of Accounting
• Keri Kornelson (Chair),  Professor of Mathematics
  
• Libby Ethridge, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education
• Phil Gibson, Professor of Biology, Professor of Botany and Microbiology
• Ulli Nollert, Associate Professor of Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering
• Wayne Riggs, Professor of Philosophy

Previous Membership

• Amy Bradshaw, Professor of Educational Psychology
• Anthony Natale, Professor of Social Work
• Hong Lin, Associate Director for Teaching, Center for Faculty Excellence
• Jill Irvine, Professor of International and Area Studies and Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
• Lori Snyder, Associate Professor of Psychology
• Megan Elwood Madden, Professor of Geoscience and Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence

Timeline of Events

Spring/Summer 2019

• Creation of the Teaching Evaluation Working Group.
• The working group got started by:
  • Reviewing the policies each unit has published regarding their annual review of teaching.
  • Reviewing literature on promising practices for Student Evaluation of Teaching.
  • Researching existing instruments for SET offered by vendors.
     
• April 24, 2019 - Faculty Senate Exec Committee.  Met with OU students who created an app to help visualize the results of the SET for given courses.
• May 3, 2019 - Meeting with IDEA representatives for a demonstration of their Student Ratings of Instruction system.  Their main idea is that students report on their course experience. 
• June 2019 - Zoom meeting with U. Oregon members of their Teaching Evaluation Task Force

Fall 2019

• October 18, 2019 - Charge to the Teaching Evaluation Working Group from the Faculty Senate Faculty Welfare Committee and the Office of the Provost.
• December 9, 2019 - Sources for Teaching Evaluations presented to Faculty Senate.

Spring/Summer 2020

• May 2020 - Draft of the Student Experience Survey shown to groups of faculty and administrators
• June 2020 - Draft of Student Experience Survey shown to members of SGA.
• July 2020 - Pilot of Student Experience Survey in summer courses.

Fall 2020

• October 2020 - Teaching Evaluation Resource website

Spring 2021

• January 2021 - The next SES pilot phase began. Eighteen units agreed to use the Student Experience Survey in their Spring semester courses.
• March 2021 - OU TEWG received an award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the program HHMI-IE3 .  We joined a Learning Community Cluster that is addressing the Challenge, "Meaningful evaluation of effective and inclusive teaching, which will inform faculty practices, including promotion and tenure decisions".
• April 19, 2021 - TEWG presented to the SGA Executive Cabinet about the Student Experience Survey and collected their feedback on the instrument.
• May 10, 2021 - TEWG presented to the Faculty Senate on the SES pilot and the ongoing pilot.

Summer 2021

• Pilot continued.
• Instructors/students in the Spring 2021 pilot were surveyed about their experience with the SES. 

Fall 2021

• Pilot continued.
• September 13, 2021 - TEWG presented at a Provost's Chairs and Directors meeting about our progress on the SES, giving information about the pilot and inviting units to join the Fall 2021 pilot.
• November 7, 2021 - TEWG presented to the Graduate Student Congress and gathered feedback.
• December 13, 2021 - TEWG updated the Faculty Senate about the SES pilot and plans for the SES to become the new course survey instrument.

Spring 2022

• SES becomes the sole student end-of-course survey in all Norman Campus courses.
• February, 2022 - Inside OU article published.
• CFE workshops developed to assist instructors in responding to student feedback on the SES.  One session was designed expressly for GTAs.

Fall 2022

• August 2022 - OU receives an NSF ADVANCE-IT award to work more globally toward meaningful and fair annual evaluations.  This project builds on the work of TEWG. OU Elevate created.
• October 10, 2022 - OU Elevate and TEWG updated the Faculty Senate on the Elevate project, the future plans for TEWG, and the impact so far from the SES.
• November 2022 - TEWG offers workshops for departmental Chairs/Committee A members on ways to incorporate the student feedback from the SES into teaching evaluations.  Recordings of this workshop are available from CFE.
• December 2022 - TEWG wrote a final report detailing accomplishments and goals for a future committee.

Fall 2023

• October 2023 - Student survey name is changed from Student Experience Survey (SES) to Course Reflection Survey (CRS).  The name change is to avoid confusion with an annual climate survey called SERU: Student Experience at Research Universities.
• November 2023 - Slides created by CFE are sent to instructors to use when discussing the Student Experience Survey with their classes.  The slides emphasize the ways that student feedback can impact a course.

Spring 2024

• February 2024 - A new version of TEWG is formed to address some remaining policy and practice issues around the student survey.  Membership was chosen in part by the Office of the Provost and in part by Faculty Senate Executive Committee.  There are 4 members from the original TEWG committee and 3 new members.