NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

1. This course as a learning experience.

2. This course compared to all your other university courses.

3. This instructor compared to all your other university instructors.

Results from global questions are highly consistent. Correlation coefficients between global items can be expected to run from r = 0.6 to greater than 0.8. This is to be expected, because global questions are all different measures of the same thing—student satisfaction. However, is student satisfaction a true measure of "good teaching?" By 1993, it became evident in the CU System that the measure in itself was inadequate as a means to evaluate the teaching of individual faculty members. In reaching this conclusion, CU's experience proved consistent with a huge amount of research on student evaluations. By 1994, it was mandated that multiple means of evaluation be employed. This mandate is also in accord with recommendations of researchers— that no single means of evaluation be used alone as a basis for merit ranking. "Additional means" suggested in CU System memos include: opinions of alumni, students, colleagues and administrators, self evaluation, and review of course materials such as syllabi, quizzes, examinations and assignments.

There are two other solid parameters that faculty at UCD can choose to measure directly in classes and then voluntarily submit as "multiple means." One would be a measure of "good practice" which would answer: "Does the instructor's style employ traits that research shows are helpful to students' success, and what are these traits?" This assessment of practices can be done by the UCD "Survey of Classroom Skills," a 60 item survey commonly given at mid-term. The purpose of the survey is for self-help rather than for annual reviews and results from it are confidential. Yet it does provide a "multiple means" if you choose to use it youself for such. A second parameter available for measurement is student learning. The questions: "Are the students learning?" and "What are they learning?" can be answered through use of a knowledge survey or "bottom line assessment" as described in Nutshell Notes, v.2, n.7. (Phone 556-4915 if you'd like a reprint).

Together, measures of student satisfaction, good practice, and student learning provide substantial evidence. All three measures require rapid computer processing of data obtained from in-class surveys, but these are now very practical for UCD faculty to do because of recent procurement of a new optical scanner that just replaced the old scanner that once operated in the now defunct UCD "Testing Center." UCD faculty have lamented loss of that facility for doing research surveys and scoring short-answer tests and quizzes. The new scanner, now temporarily housed in the Office of Teaching Effectiveness, is more versatile and useful. It has an ink read head, which means students may use pens or pencils to mark the survey. The only requirement is that the survey forms be printed in hues of red. At present, we use NCS Form No. 16504, which permits single responses of up to 200 questions. Departments that wish to use the scanner for surveys and testing should order their own red forms from NCS (call 1-800-367-6627). The scanner provides test and survey analyses packages, or you can choose to have the data read into an ASCII file that can be conveniently imported into the spreadsheet or statistics package on your own computer. For now, there will be a simple $15.00 flat charge for each batch of surveys or tests processed. The charge is used to maintain a service contract on the new scanner. There is no charge for either forms or processing to do the 60-pt. Survey or "bottom line assessment." To investigate making use of the scanner, call 556-4915.