Committee on Faculty
Recommendations on Teaching Assessment and Improvement
This
report documents the recommendations made by the Committee on Faculty (COF)
with regard to teaching assessment and improvement. This document incorporates
many of the recommendations made by a separate COF subcommittee (the Subcommittee
on Academic Affairs (SAA)) in the attached
document titled "Summary of Recommendations for 'Student Commentary
on Teaching' Form and Function".
In an
academic setting, assessment is typically used for summative or formative
purposes (1) or both, i.e., used for administrative decisions and/or
for faculty improvement. The SAA analysis of the Student Commentary
on Teaching (SCOT) form and its development history indicate that the
SCOT form was not specifically designed to clearly assess teaching for
either purpose. The current University-wide assessment procedure that uses
the SCOT form for both summative and formative purposes provides unreliable
information for either purpose.
Education
and excellence are at the core of the Marquette University mission. As
such, systematic quality control measures are needed to ensure that the
quality of the educational process is continuously improved.
Consistent
with the Marquette mission of fostering professional and personal excellence,
the COF believes that: new University-wide assessment procedures that yield
information clearly relevant for both summative and formative purposes
be designed and implemented. Information in these areas will provide different
perspectives needed to evaluate individual teaching and program performance
with respect to stated educational objectives.
Specific Recommendations:
Establish a committee (or committees,
preferably part of a permanent "center for faculty development") charged
with the following:
-
develop a new student commentary on teaching form to be designed
by professionals in survey preparation
-
interact with department, college, and university promotion
and tenure committees to establish proper perspective on the intended use
of each of the teaching assessment methods
-
oversee any and all teaching evaluation methods to be used
at Marquette University
-
provide a faculty mentoring program using the formative information
extracted from the newly developed assessment methods.
(1) Hoyt, D. P. and Pallet, W. H. (1999).
"Appraising Teaching Effectiveness: Beyond Student Ratings", IDEA Paper
No. 36, IDEA Center, Kansas State University.