Online Student-Generated Course Evaluations Using CourseEval³

What is UBCATS intended to accomplish?

• support campus goal of academic excellence
• comply with campus policy to evaluate all grad, professional and undergrad instruction
• comply with SUNY and accreditation requirements for program assessment
• comply with faculty senate guidelines on evaluations
• provide informative and analytical course evaluations to faculty, students, and administrators
• provide helpful feedback to faculty that guides improvements in student satisfaction and ratings
• provide feedback usually unavailable with assessment, peer evaluation, and grading
• provide archived, secure supporting data for faculty tenure, promotion, and award dossiers
• provide documentation for graduate student dossiers
• provide alternative to 'evaluation by anecdote' with empirical data and benchmarks
• provide anonymous, thoughtful, detailed, and secure written comments

What do the evaluation reports indicate about teaching at UB?

• teachers and courses are generally rated 'above average' (~4 on scale of 1-5)
• ratings among departments differ little for both courses and teachers
• overall, department-wide and individual ratings change little over time
• course-level accounts for very little variation in ratings
• large lecture courses (91+) are rated below average more frequently
• easiest for small sections to be rated highly, less likely to be rated below average
• easier for large sections to be rated below average, less likely that they are rated highly

What have we learned about student participation?

• 60% of students completed 41% of 72,000 surveys (max= 9 per student)
• students respond to encouragement and reminders by providing better feedback
• higher GPA students complete more evaluation surveys
• lower GPA students less likely to complete surveys
• higher response rate is associated with modestly higher rating

What have we learned about faculty ratings and participation?

• faculty appreciate the quick release of results (75% of 1300 faculty accessed in first 5 days)
• ratings are, in part, related to curriculum, course content, faculty rank, and enrollment
• small differences in ratings are without consequence; chairs note few surprising ratings
• courses with few responses offer volatile reports, unreliable reports, little anonymity
• reports of survey errors (by students and faculty) have been substantially reduced
• reports, by themselves, are insufficient for personnel judgments
• reports, by themselves, do not identify good and bad courses and instructors

Attracting and retaining faculty and students of the highest quality requires that teaching and curriculum be of the highest quality and perceived by students as of the highest quality. In pursuit of academic excellence, the evaluation of classroom instruction is both expected and required at the University at Buffalo. Systematic course evaluation has been a hallmark of the College of Arts and Sciences since its creation and the results show that students rate course and instructor quality as generally very good to excellent in graduate and undergraduate instruction for all departments of the College of Arts and Sciences.