Focusing on the Process of Change: The Role of Campus Engagement

• In Event: 51.039 - Exploring the Contested Narratives of the Value of Student Evaluations of Teaching

Abstract

At our university, we are in the early stages of making a shift to a new common course evaluation instrument. In the past three years and with the endorsement of our Senate members, we have moved to a fully online system and developed a draft instrument for testing. An advisory committee is now overseeing pilot tests of the question wording with students and next steps involve piloting the complete instrument in selected courses. In tandem with these pilots, we are creating a beta version of our interpretation and use guidelines and developing a statistical testing plan to investigate the presence and effect of possible biases at our institution. Overall, we have an institutional directive to make recommendations next year that seek to create a better SET instrument and process. Alongside this project, another advisory group is investigating additional forms of evaluating teaching, including peer review and teaching dossiers, and is charged with making recommendations regarding a more comprehensive evaluation system about teaching for our university.

We recognize that we have a lot more work to do to fully launch our SET change initiative, but the work undertaken so far has revealed that focusing on the change process itself is of critical importance since the response to our work to date has been mixed from our campus community. Some cohorts are excited for a change while others respond with strong emotion and a commitment to the status quo. Recent attacks on SETs in the research literature and at other institutions have added to our challenges. As such, we have identified the need for ongoing engagement with our entire campus community to give them a voice in the process as well as to learn about enabling and inhibiting perceptions and beliefs about SETs. How well do our approaches to establishing the reliability and validity of SETs fit with existing research paradigms? What do our various stakeholders believe about how the results are interpreted and used and how should this be done? Much is to be learned from broad engagement.

In this presentation, various approaches to campus engagement will be shared, along with lessons learned. Key enabling and inhibiting perceptions and beliefs will also be shared as a means of helping others identify what may arise during a change initiative regarding SETs and identifying questions for further exploration and discussion.

Author

• Donna Ellis, University of Waterloo