The Report of the Senate Faculty Affairs and Personnel Committee on charge S-0109 "Best Practices in Assessment of Teaching" was adopted by the University Senate on March 1, 2002 [View original report, updated to also include new Recommendation], except that Recommendation #7, after lengthy discussion, was referred back to the committee for further study. Recommendation #7 had been based upon the advice given to the committee by Professor Angela O'Donnell of the Graduate Scool of Education, an expert in the evaluation of instruction. Her advice to the committee, as stated in the original committee report was as follows:
"Professor O'Donnell stated that the most reliable use of student course evaluations is when faculty who teach different sections of the same course with a common syllabus are compared. Comparing evaluation scores from a large lecture course with scores from a small upper-level or graduate seminar is not reliable. Furthermore, evaluation scores for courses with large enrollments, required courses, and courses involving quantitative material tend to be lower than scores for other courses."Thus, recommendation #7 is an important part of the committee's recommendations of best practices. Following the discussion of this issue on the floor of the Senate, the committee has consulted many of the Senators who spoke in the meeting to the problems with this recommendation as previously drafted and wishes to make the following revised recommendation, which, hopefully now addresses most of the concerns raised.
REVISED RECOMMENDATION #7
7. The University should report to each department the distribution of raw scores for each course and instructor, as well as the mean scores, as now reported.
Since student-evaluation scores are most useful only when comparisons are made with similar types of courses, a best practice would be for each department to divide its courses into appropriate categories of comparable courses, for teaching evaluation, or comparison purposes. These divisions could include, for example, large lecture courses, laboratory courses, studio courses, seminar courses, honors courses, required courses, graduate courses, and research courses. Each department, from the distributions of raw scores provided by the University, would calculate the departmental means for each category of courses appropriate to that department. It would normalize the student course evaluation scores for each course and instructor against the appropriate departmental mean, i.e., divide the raw scores by the appropriate departmental mean scores. The department would then use and report these normalized scores in its personnel decisions and recommendations, as well as the raw scores for each instructor. In addition, each department might also wish to compute, use, and report the full score distributions and/or any other statistical quantities, such as grouped median, or standard deviation.
RESOLUTION
In Support of Committee Report and Revised Recommendation #7:
Whereas, teaching is a core priority of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and
Whereas, the current system for reporting and using student course evaluation scores should be made more useful to individual faculty members and to individuals involved in making reappointment, promotion and tenure recommendations;
Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the Rutgers University Senate endorses adding the Revised Recommendation #7 to the Report on Best Practices in Assessment of Teaching, and urges the Administration to implement these Recommendations, as revised.