Statement on Teaching Evaluation

Goals of Teaching Evaluation

  1. To provide a comprehensive and rational basis for the evaluation of teaching, so that teaching is justly rewarded through the Faculty's performance evaluation, tenure, promotion, and salary procedures.
  2. To offer students the opportunity to participate more fully in their instruction; to provide a safe, anonymous means of contributing to the reward of effective teaching and to teaching improvement.
  3. To provide instructors with data for teaching enhancement and acknowledgement from their students for effective teaching.
  4. To provide unit heads or supervisors with sufficient information to counsel instructors, to seek ways to enhance their effectiveness through feedback on facilities, to address any problems before they reach a critical level and to propose faculty for distinguished teaching awards.

Regulations

  1. Normally, all faculty and courses will be evaluated each term unless there is prior agreement with the Chair or Director.
  2. The Faculty of Environment will use the Teaching Evaluation form approved by Executive Committee, as well as the TA and facility forms as appropriate.
  3. This will be supplemented from time to time by colleague evaluation of classroom performance and course materials.
  4. Non-classroom teaching activities will be acknowledged and evaluated as well. Included are: undergraduate and graduate student supervision, academic counseling, and attempts by faculty to improve their teaching effectiveness through curriculum and course development, reading and study, and participation in teaching-related workshops and courses.
  5. Programs, courses and instructors will be evaluated from time to time using solicited comments from recent graduates.
  6. Faculty should develop 'three or five-year plans' which focus on objectives for teaching in the context of research and service activities.The plans would be formulated in consultation with the unit chair/director and would provide a basis for evaluation, for example, in the annual faculty performance review.They would provide an opportunity for faculty to gain recognition and agreement for such things as upgrading in new areas and skills in teaching, research and service.

Procedure

  1. Evaluations normally will be conducted for each regular class taught.The Faculty will extend this practice for labs and discussion groups run by teaching assistants and facilities supervised by staff.Teaching evaluation is purely optional on the part of the students, however.Students in very small classes, where individual anonymity cannot be ensured, may be asked if they would prefer collectively to fill out a single form as a group.During a term in which hundreds of students may be using a given technical facility, the staff member's supervisor, in consultation with the facility's manager and instructors(s) of courses utilizing the facility, can select courses to obtain responses from a representative sample of students.
  2. Teaching evaluations will normally be administered within the instructor's unit, but may be administered by the Dean's Office as appropriate to the instructor's appointment.At the discretion of each unit, teaching evaluations may be administered by a member of either the office staff,student association, or faculty.Instructors are not to administer teaching evaluations for their own courses, and students are to be notified that the instructor will not see their responses until after the final grades for the course have been submitted.Units may decide whether to have a faculty, staff or student proctor for the evaluations; or whether the instructor may distribute the forms and identify one student in the class to collect them and return them to the departmental office, but the instructor is to leave the classroom while students are filling out the forms.Completed forms should be placed in a sealed envelope before they are returned to the departmental office.
  3. Teaching evaluation proctors are to consult with instructors to choose dates for evaluation at a time appropriate for the course.Instructors should allow 20 minutes at the end of a class period.Instructors should remind students that participation is purely optional but strongly encouraged, and that their anonymity will be protected.When choosing dates instructors should avoid a date when an assignment or exam result is returned or just before an exam.
  4. Departmental office staff (or Dean's office staff where appropriate) will monitor the machine grading process,and return the evaluations plus machine-prepared summary sheets to chairs/directors (or staff supervisor as appropriate). Unit heads will return evaluations and summaries to instructors after final grades have been submitted.Unit heads will keep copies of summaries on file for a sufficient period to provide data on evaluation of teaching for merit, tenure, and promotion consideration.� Unit heads will share results on teaching assistants with their supervising faculty.
  5. Student teaching evaluation forms are only one means of compiling information on teaching, and much of their content is necessarily subjective.One or two negative evaluations are to be expected in any class and would rarely outweigh a class of generally positive evaluations.Needless to say, negative feedback on facilities should provide information for prudent allocation of future equipment funds, and is not to affect an instructor's grade in a performance evaluation.The supervisor should review the evaluations with common sense, compassion, and a comprehensive view of the difficulty of the material, the size of the class, any problems outside the professor's control and the composition of the student body.Additional information on teaching quality might include peer evaluation, teaching portfolios, discussions with the instructor and the like.
  6. Instructors have the right to respond in writing to their supervisor on any aspect of their teaching evaluations.Instructors also have the right to submit to the unit heads any optional additional materials to illustrate their teaching effectiveness,such as syllabi and reading lists, results of peer evaluation and the like to create a full or partial teaching portfolio.Instructors have the right to use their own formative teaching evaluations in class and to submit results to their supervisor in addition to the Faculty-wide form.
  7. Peer evaluation of teaching is mandated under a separate UW policy for tenure cases.
  8. As with any guidelines, flexibility should be permitted for extenuating circumstances,subject to prior consultation between the instructor and supervisor.Supervisors should use teaching evaluation information to acknowledge and reward strong teachers, and to counsel and assist instructors on ways to improve their teaching.

Last updated on April 18, 1994