Evaluation of Teaching

Evaluation of Teaching for Annual Merit Reviews and Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Decisions

The Faculty Representative Assembly Teaching Evaluation Task Force offers numerous recommendations for the evaluation of teaching for annual merit reviews and reappointment, promotion, and tenure. Two key recommendations are:

• Regents policy requires that each unit use at least three measures for teaching evaluations for both annual merit reviews and RPT decisions; FCQs must be used as one of those measures
• Any evaluation based on the FCQ numerical ratings be used for no more than one third of the overall teaching rating of the faculty member
• Read the full report

The College of Letters, Arts & Sciences further has numerous recommendations for the evaluation of teaching in its Advisory Report.

Effective fall 2017, all University of Colorado Faculty Course Questionnaires will be administered online. The following resources examine the issues around response rates for online vs pencil-and-paper FCQs and offer suggestions for encouraging higher response rates.

• Use this Sample Syllabus Entry to explain the importance of the course evaluations
• University of Colorado - Encouraging High Online Response Rates Web Site
• Extra Credit Micro-Incentives and Response Rates for Online Course Evaluations: Two Quasi-Experiments; Eric D. Sundstrom, Erin E. Hardin, and Matthew J. Shaffer; Teaching of Psychology, 2016, Vol. 43(4) 276-284
• The effect of incentives and other instructor-driven strategies to increase online student evaluation response rates; James Goodman, Robert Anson & Marcia Belcheir; Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Volume 40, 2015 - Issue 7, p 958-970
• The adequacy of response rates to online and paper surveys: what can be done?; Duncan D. Nulty; Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Volume 33, 2008 - Issue 3, p 301-314

Micro-incentives (aka extra credit points) can encourage higher FCQ response rates.

To give extra credit points in Canvas:

1. Click the Course Evaluations link in your course.
2. From the Results drop-down menu in the purple banner select Canvas Gradebook Update.
3. On the Gradebook Update page click Update for the course in which you want to give points.
4. In the Update Canvas Gradebook pop-up window, choose Completed under the Response Type and enter the number of points you wish to award. Click Update Canvas Gradebook.
5. Wait for the confirmation email, then verify the update in the Canvas gradebook. The new gradebook column created in Canvas will begin with the semester and year (for example, "Fall 2026..."), making it easy to identify among your existing gradebook columns. You can edit this if you like.