At its meeting of May 12, 2008, the Academic Senate approved the following Policy Recommendation presented by Senator Bros for the Professional Standards Committee.
Action by University President: Approved by President Don Kassing on May 15, 2008.
Policy Recommendation
Developing Baseline Values (Norms) for the Student Opinion of Teaching Effectiveness (SOTE) Surveys for Use in Periodic and Performance Evaluations
WHEREAS at SJSU, SOTEs are used as an important indicator of teaching effectiveness; and
WHEREAS average scores for items in the SOTEs computed for a department, college or university are used as a standard for comparison to evaluate an instructor’s SOTE scores; and
WHEREAS for each SOTE item, the average of scores and the range representing the middle 60% of ratings are used to represent the norms (baseline values) for the department, college or university; and
WHEREAS it is important to update periodically the data used to represent the norms; and
WHEREAS faculty must be able to select courses for which SOTEs are to be collected for periodic and performance evaluations in accordance with University policies and the CFA-CSU Agreement; therefore be it
RESOLVED that the following procedures be adopted effective immediately:
1.0 Faculty shall continue to select courses for which SOTES will be collected according to current University policies and the CFA-CSU Agreement.
2.0 Beginning Fall 2008 and every five years thereafter, all departments in the university will decide if SOTEs from their departments will be used in the norming process.
2.1 Faculty members in a department (or equivalent unit) shall vote to determine if SOTEs for all courses offered by that department for one semester shall be collected for the purposes of creating norms for the department, college or university.
2.2 If the department or equivalent unit votes, by a simple majority, not to collect SOTEs for norming, data from that department shall not be collected for norming purposes and department norms will not be available for that department.
2.3 Otherwise, for the norming semester, the quantitative portion of the SOTE instrument shall be administered for courses that were not selected by faculty for periodic and performance evaluations. These SOTEs shall be sent directly to the Office of Institutional Research to be used as data for norming. Results from these specific SOTEs shall be available only to individuals associated with the computation of norms. All SOTEs collected for the norming semester will be used for computing norms.
VOTE: (6 For, 0 against, 0 Abstain)
Present: Shannon Bros, Daryl Canham, William Jiang, Sam Obi, Mengxiong Liu and Angela Rickford
Absent: Gwendolyn Mok, Steven Zeier and Asim Zia
Financial Impact: Cost to the Office of Instructional Research approximately $9,875:
a) Printing: $1,875 (18,750 forms @ $0.10)
b) Processing (e.g., student assistants): $8,000
Workload Impact: Negligible for faculty
Rationale: San Jose State University does not currently have a policy for a process to determine baseline values for SOTEs and, such a policy would have to resolve issues resulting from a previous policy (S03-3. In 2006, CFA filed a grievance regarding the universal administration of SOTEs as specified in S03-3. In the Feb 22, 2006 Arbitration agreement that resulted, the senate could not be defined as an academic unit and, as such, cannot be the party that determines if universal SOTEs can be made.In 2006, the policy that described the administration and norming processes for SOTEs (S03-3) was rescinded by President Don Kassing. In 2006, S06-6 reinstated the administrative process for SOTEs but not the norming process.
Five issues will be resolved with the adoption of this policy recommendation:
1) San Jose State will have a process for providing baseline values (norms) for SOTEs to be used as a standard of comparison for evaluating SOTE scores for a faculty member.
2) An appropriate academic unit, the department, will determine if universal SOTEs will be collected. Departments can vote to determine if they will participate in the norming process.
3) In the previous policy, there were issues concerning the personal SOTEs that were given to faculty but had not been previously selected for use in their RTP evaluations. Faculty wanted to use some of the personal SOTEs in their personal action file (dossier). In the proposed policy, faculty members will not have access to any SOTEs not selected for the use in RTP evaluations.
4) There was a concern about the confidentiality of SOTE results. No one outside the Office of Institutional Research will have access to SOTE surveys that are used only for norming purposes. The instructor’s name and course designations will not be included in the SOTE instrument.
5) Departments who choose not to participate in the norming process will not receive baseline values for their departments.