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A new teaching evaluation system replacing the Carolina Course Review will
see only limited use this semester because of budget cuts.
"We don't have the money to actually create the system this year," Ed Neal
of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) said at an Oct. 8 Faculty Council
meeting. CTL is charged with administering the new evaluation, which the
Faculty Council approved last spring.
Widespread use of the evaluation was to begin this semester, but instead
only one College of Arts and Sciences department will use it in full and some
others will use a portion.
That's because only one of three full-time positions needed to support the
system was funded for 1999-2000, and none of the requested $131,359 --
including $22,952 for start-up costs -- made the budget. Dollars saved by the
cuts went toward closing the University's $6.8 million budget shortfall for
this year.
Dubbed the "3-Set Evaluation System" by CTL, the new tool is modeled on
one used by the University of Michigan. It generates three reports: one for
department chairs to use in evaluating faculty members for renewal, promotion
and tenure; one for students to use in picking their courses; and one for
instructors to use in guiding efforts aimed at improving their teaching.
The first two reports are based on sets of standardized questions, whereas
the third report is based on a menu of CTL-developed questions that instructors
may add as they deem appropriate.
Only the first two reports are required, although the one generated for
students will not figure in personnel matters -- its results will be posted on
the Student Government web site. Instructors will get all three reports.
Other than a test run of the entire 3-Set Evaluation System this fall in
the psychology department, only the first report will be used in a pilot
program for College of Arts and Sciences departments without their own
evaluation tools.
The program will cover courses taught by faculty members who must be
evaluated for personnel matters. Graduate teaching assistants and teaching
fellows whose continued employment may be affected by their course evaluations,
as well as those looking to bolster their teaching portfolios, also can take
part in the pilot.
At full implementation, the 3-Set Evaluation System will enable
instructors to customize evaluations for individual courses by generating the
optional third report. That wasn't possible with the Carolina Course Review
(CCR), a standardized questionnaire that was adopted or rejected by a whole
department.
CTL will help instructors develop course-specific questions for the third
report. It also will administer entire evaluations, a task that will include
analyzing data and generating and issuing reports.
In the absence of the new system's full implementation, departments not
needing to evaluate instructors for personnel reasons may use evaluation tools
they've developed themselves or a basic evaluation form/analysis spreadsheet
available at CTL's web site http://www.unc.edu/depts/ctl/new4.html
According to Neal, full implementation of the 3-Set Evaluation System will
depend on funding. Provost Richard "Dick" Richardson said he's trying to cobble
together dollars but the going is tough.
"We're talking about very limited dollars right now in availability," he
said.
The need for a new method for students to evaluate courses stemmed from
the Faculty Council raising concerns in the spring of 1998 about the CCR, the
student-developed method used since the 1970s.
Those concerns included skewed scores, especially in small classes, and
the use of such scores in making personnel and salary decisions. Faculty
members also voiced concern that the raw data from the course review was posted
on the Internet.
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