In Winter 2024, Deans’ Council approved updates to Student Course Perceptions (SCP) surveys to ensure consistency and fairness across faculties. These changes mean that SCP surveys are now administered for classes with five or fewer students enrolled, addressing inconsistencies that previously excluded these classes in some areas.
To protect student anonymity, SCP survey results from these small classes are no longer immediately released to instructors or unit heads, and therefore are not available to be included in the 2025 performance review process. Work is underway to develop an approach to aggregate this data so that it can be released without compromising student trust in the SCP process.
This change has raised concern for some faculty members as they prepare their 2025 performance review materials. As they complete this activity, faculty members are encouraged to draw from other sources of evidence of teaching effectiveness – such as may be found in peer reviews of teaching, student achievements, and narrative reflections – and to highlight their alignment with the Design, Implementation, Learning Experience and Professional Development areas of the Framework for Teaching Effectiveness. These can be included in performance review forms and discussed with academic unit heads during evaluations.
For further guidance, please refer to the following:
- Policy 77 – Tenure and Promotion of Faculty Members– updated in September 2024, Section 3. Performance Assessment describes Waterloo’s holistic approach to teaching assessment, including the use of diverse evidence sources for assessing teaching quality.
- Waterloo’s Framework for Teaching Effectiveness – adopted in 2022, the Framework offers a common understanding of teaching effectiveness at Waterloo. It includes several Areas of Focus organized into four categories: Design, Implementation, Learning Experience, and Professional Development.
- SCP Updates Approved Winter 2024 by the Deans and Provost– outlines changes to SCP survey administration and the handling of survey results for very small classes.
For more information or support, academic unit heads and faculty members can connect with David DeVidi (AVPA) for guidance.