Minutes of the Evaluation and Assessment Committee
The meeting was called to order on January 12, 2016 at 1 p.m. in Room 5208.
Members Present:
Jim Bell, Sue Cochrane, Cheryl Cunningham (Chair), Peter Dorman, Jessica Hogan, Margie Jones, Jim Lemons, Shannon McDermott, Kris Ogden, Gary Randolph, Xavier Retnam, and Pam Reynolds (Recorder)
Members Absent:
Nathan Kolb, Jeff Laub, Muriel Mickles, and Kevin Riley
Cheryl received an automatic reply from Nathan stating he would be out of the office today.
Meeting Minutes from the September 29, 2015 meeting:
Pam handed out a copy of the September 29, 2015 minutes. Due to the length of time between meetings, Cheryl asked the members to read over the minutes to see if anyone had any changes. Each member read the minutes and had no corrections. Jessy approved the minutes and Gary seconded the approval.
Old Business:
Report by the (OIESP) Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Planning from Kris. Kris announced she gave an update at the Spring 2016 Convocation where she stated that all the evaluations are moving along as planned. Kris discussed the student course evaluations being done through IOTA Solutions. IOTA Solutions upgraded this fall. Kris is using IOTA in some of the high schools and the governor’s school. When we started we were reaching 30%--now we are up to 45% participation. A representative, Carey Long, was on campus on January 5, 2016, to present the updates of the IOTA Solutions to the faculty members. Eleven faculty members attended the presentation.
Among some of the new features include:
· Single sign in on Blackboard which takes you directly to the evaluation
· It will now be available on mobile devices
· It is ADA compliant
· It has a space that will allow for comments from students and faculty will be able to reply to those comments
Kris believes the presentation went well. Gary attended the presentation and he thinks it is worthwhile. The only problem Gary has is it can be quite detailed and a possibility that the faculty could get abuse from the administration. But overall, he feels you can get great feedback (positive and negative).
Jim L. feels the better the response rate the more valid results we would obtain. We would use this information to improve the courses not to find fault with faculty.
Jim B. would like to be able to give mid-term evaluations and not just at the end. He believes at the end is useless for the current students. If we have mid-term evaluations, the faculty member is able to make changes for the current students which would make for more positive feedback at the end. Kris stated if we purchased the premium features we would be able to do mid-term evaluations and also be able to use instructor-added questions. She also thinks the faculty rebuttal tool would be a big help when administration is reviewing the evaluations.
Kris stated all these new features will cost $2,300 annually. If the committee agrees to this upgrade, she will take care of getting it funded. Jessy asked if this should be presented to the faculty association. The committee agreed to take our recommendations to the faculty association. The faculty association would either approve or disapprove our recommendation. Peter motioned to upgrade to the Premium version and Jim B. seconded the motion.
Kris will attend the next faculty association meeting when the recommendation will be presented.
Update on the Research of Administrator Evaluations by Jim Lemons. Pam handed out a copy of an email sent from Dr. Stephen Corbin, Dean of Educational Support Services. Attached to this email were two draft documents with the procedures the colleges will use to transition the implementation of the new evaluation policy.
Jim L. announced the State Board approved the new plan which will be implemented on July 1, 2016. The evaluations are now on a fiscal year and will transition to the new plan which will become a calendar year. Due to the implementation being on July 1, there will be 6-month evaluations. The type of evaluations will be the 360 evaluations.
Each college will have to use the common sense approach. They need to take into consideration; for example, vice presidents who may only have two or three people who work for them and deans who may have 75 people working for them. This plan has been modeled after the faculty evaluations.
Cheryl congratulated Jim L. on the amount of work he and the Task Force had done on this project. Jim L. stated he had learned a lot from our college and the other colleges that worked on completing this plan.
New Business:
Cheryl asked if there was any new business. At this time, there was no new business.
Agenda topics for next meeting:
· Update on the ongoing assessments from Kris
· Update on the recommendation of the IOTA Premium software for student evaluations from the faculty association from Kris
Our next meeting will be held February 16, 2016 at 1 p.m. in Room 5208.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:40 p.m.
Minutes submitted by Pam Reynolds