The Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost announced Tuesday that OU will pilot test a new Student Experience Survey this semester as an alternative to the existing class evaluation system.
According to the email sent on behalf of The Teaching Evaluation Working Group, the Student Experience Survey is a new method of gathering feedback from students on courses and instructors, with a goal of providing effective feedback to help instructors better their courses. Pilot testing of the SES will occur for only some departments, while others will continue to gather student feedback via the current eValulate survey system.
The SES asks the same core questions for all courses, unlike the eValute survey system, according to the email. These core questions will be multiple choice and free response and will be placed into five categories, including student engagement, course organization, student learning experiences, learning environment and impact on learning.
The Teaching Evaluation Working Group was formed in January 2019 by the Norman campus Office of the Provost and Faculty Senate, according to the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost’s website. The TEWG’s goal is to improve course and instructor evaluation systems to reduce bias, increase equity, improve instructor teaching and better the student learning experience.
According to a TEWG statement by Keri Kornelson, OU mathematics professor and faculty senate chair-elect, the SES differs from the current eValuate system because it more accurately represents instructors’ adjustments and effective evaluation for hybrid or online courses.
According to the statement, studies have found traditional student teaching evaluations, like the one used at OU, are likely to reflect bias rather than student learning.
“This means that the professors whose students learn the most, and who are doing the work of adapting their courses to use techniques proven to enhance learning, are often not getting the highest evaluations,” Kornelson said. “This is particularly true when that professor is a woman or is from a historically underrepresented group.”
Several OU professors, including former Provost and Senior Vice President Kyle Harper, have acknowledged the inefficiency of the current numerical class-evaluation system.
The new SES asks students specific questions, giving instructors “targeted feedback” for improvement and to lessen possible biases, according to the email.
Kornelson wrote a previous pilot for the SES was run in summer 2020 for over 500 course sections to gather feedback from students and faculty on both the new SES and current eValuate system. This feedback was used for this current pilot, which will be introduced at the end of the spring 2021 semester.
According to the email, students asked to provide feedback via SES are encouraged to participate. OU is planning to use the new SES fully across campus in the fall 2021 semester, according to the TWEG statement.
