Transcript Senate Meeting
June 7, 2011
Claire Crutchley, chair: I call this meeting to order.
Good afternoon. I am Claire Crutchley, Chair of the University Senate. I welcome you to the June Senate meeting. Senate membership is 88 Senators. At this time there are 47 Senators in attendance; a quorum requires 45 senators. A quorum has been established.
A short review of the rules of the Senate. Senators and substitutes for Senators, please sign in the back and get a clicker so you can vote. If you would like to speak about an issue, go to the microphone; state your name, whether you are a Senator and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that Senators or substitute Senators be allowed to speak first; after all comments by Senators on an issue, guests are welcome to speak.
The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the May meeting. Russ Muntifering posted the minutes and sent a link to all Senators. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions to these minutes? Hearing none, the minutes will stand as approved as written.
We switched the order on this agenda so my remarks will be first and second Dr. Mazey will present remarks from the President’s office.
This is the last Senate meeting of the 2010/2011 academic year and my last meeting as chair. This year has been a busy and productive year in the Senate. Some highlights that the Senate passed and were approved by the Provost and President are the Scholarly Incentive Plan, changes in procedure in the Academic Honesty Code, changes in organization of the Handbook and additional academic freedom language in the handbook, changes in the Promotion and Tenure process, and changes in promotion process of non-tenure track faculty. Some of these changes need approval by the Board of Trustees and will be going to the June 17 meeting of the Board of Trustees. All of the changes could not have happened without the work of committees and committee chairs throughout the university.
I would like to thank all of the Senators who have served this year. Thank you for your willingness to talk the people you represent and speak up at Senate meetings as well as vote. Let’s give a special recognition to those Senators who are rotating off the Senate this year. Please stand if this is your last meeting. A third of you should be rotating off this year. Let’s recognize these senators.
Two of the Senators rotating off are Immediate past chair Kathryn Flynn and Secretary Russ Muntifering. Their dedication, knowledge of the university, and hard work have truly made this an excellent year. They will be missed. On July 1, Ann Beth Presley will take over as Chair of the Senate and Larry Crowley will take over as Secretary. They will do an excellent job serving the Senate and the faculty. Working with these executive officers has been very rewarding and fun as we have worked really well together. I would also like to thank the full Steering committee who was also an excellent group to work with. This includes the Executive committee and also includes Jim Wright, Nedret Billor, Robin Jaffe and Andy Wohrley. I would also like to thank Constance Hendricks, my parliamentarian, who has given great advice and helped me follow Roberts Rules of Order.
Finally, there is one individual who has made the work on the Senate a great experience for all of us in Steering and Executive. I would like to thank our Provost, Dr. Mary Ellen Mazey who has worked with us as a colleague. It is Dr. Mazey’s last Senate meeting. Chair-Elect Ann Beth Presley will present a resolution in Dr. Mazey’s honor.
Ann Beth Presley, chair-elect: We have a resolution honoring Dr. Mazey whether she wants it or not.
Resolution Honoring Dr. Mary Ellen Mazey
WHEREAS, Dr. Mary Ellen Mazey became Provost of Auburn University in February 2009 and
WHEREAS, In her short tenure at Auburn University, she has facilitated major positive changes which include innovative programming in undergraduate education, streamlining promotion and tenure procedures, increasing transparency and communication between administrators and faculty and prioritizing academic functions in the facilities planning process, and
WHEREAS, Dr. Mazey has been a strong advocate of faculty participation in shared governance, and
WHEREAS, Dr. Mazey has fostered shared governance by meeting regularly with the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors,
BE IT RESOLVED, that the members of the Auburn University Senate, who represent faculty, staff, administrative professionals, and students, express their appreciation to Provost Mazey for her leadership, promotion of an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, and significant accomplishments in this time of limited resources during her tenure as Provost of Auburn University, and
BE IT RESOLVED, the members of the Auburn University Senate wish her continued success and let it be known that she will be sorely missed.
(standing ovation.)
Claire Crutchley, chair: The chair acknowledges by unanimous consent, the resolution has been adopted. Dr. Mazey please come forward.
(Present resolution to Dr. Mazey)
Dr. Mazey, Provost: Thank you so much. Thank all of you, you’re what make Auburn University what it is and how great it is, so continue the good work. I’ll be reading about you and knowing how you are collaborating with each other to build this institution in the future. Thank you so much.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any questions or comments for the chair?
Dr. Mazey will now present remarks from the President and Provost’s office.
Dr. Mazey, Provost: Thank you, I get to play the president here for a few minutes.
On behalf of President Gogue who is out of town today I’d like to give you a short report and give you an opportunity to ask me any questions. As always I know one of your first concerns would be the budget, so I did e-mail Sherry Fulford and asked her where the state budget stands at the present time. I want to make sure I get this correct so I’m going to read to you the response.
Governor Bentley has sent both the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund budgets back to the legislature with executive amendments. We of course on our side are very interested in the Education Trust Fund. The executive amendment on the Education Trust Fund budget relates to a couple of bills that have not yet received final passage and are needed in order to balance the FY 2012 budget. One of those bills would be an increase in the state employee and teacher’s retirement system employee rates. So if you’ve been following that that would mean that they would be taking a larger percentage out of your check in order to increase for the retirement system.
The second one is PEEHIP, which is the public education employees health insurance program, and those premium changes are for those individuals having fewer than 25 years or are under 65 at the time of retirement. Our employees participate of course in PEEHIP only when they retire.
Both of these bills would generate savings for the Education Trust Fund, but the increased cost for active employees in the teacher’s retirement system and the employees also participating in PEEHIP, so the Education Trust Fund will come up at the same time you will be making larger contributions. They expect these bills to pass this Thursday and the budget then would receive final approval. So that’s where things stand at the current time and I’m sure you can follow it in the newspaper and through the news.
On that sort of down note let me put this very positive note in terms of a couple of other items that you may be interested in. As you all know Dr. Drew Clark and many others are working as we prepare for the SACS reaffirmation visit in 2013 and we’ve had numerous faculty and others involved in developing the QEP Project and 4 proposals did come forward. A group of us including Ann Beth and Claire, we sat down and reviewed those proposals and we have chosen one and you will have more information on this later on in terms of what the next steps are, but that is the E-portfolio Project. The E-portfolio Project has been chosen as the QEP project for Auburn University.
A third item that you are probably interested in is the Provost search. If you looked in the recent Chronicle that search has been announced. [10:41] The search firm is Jerry Baker and Associates. I think if I recall the closing date is July 10 or 11 so I would encourage all you as faculty, staff, and administrators to certainly recommend those folks either internally or across the country that you think would be good for that position. I have talked with the search firm and feel very positive that you will get a strong pool of candidates for the position. So pleased be involved in the process whether it’s in nominating individuals and as candidates come on campus to interview for that.
The final thing that I have and really been excited about since I’ve been involved down here in my short tenure at Auburn University has been the SEC Provost’s Group. We meet 2 or 3 times a year and thanks to the president’s initiative we’ve come up with a couple of new projects that we’re working toward the implementation of and one of those is a major academic conference. This past spring we came up with an RFP, it was sent to all the deans within our respective institutions and this past week…in order to submit it had to be a collaboration of a minimum of 4 SEC institutions…and this past week the Provost after some voting and discussion actually chose one. The lead on the proposal was the University of Georgia, but Auburn University is one of the major collaborators and the emphasis will be on bioenergy in the southeastern part of the country and the role we will play in the whole energy environment. This is a group of collaborators that have been working together, I think it will be a great opportunity and the SEC actually put $200,000 into making sure that conference is a success. And we were already talking about seeing how we could get the Secretary of Energy and other people that are very important in energy policy in addition to the researchers in energy across our campuses.
Another initiative the SEC Provost Group are working to implement, and this too was an idea that came from the presidents. Currently in the SEC each year there are McWhorter Awards in which the outstanding woman athlete and male athlete are chosen. Well now we are going to have an outstanding faculty award. And that will be the best teacher-scholar and I’ll be working with the interim provost Boosinger as to the criteria and we would do the selection on our respective campuses before March of next year. And the faculty member chosen on our campus then would receive $5,000 Award and again each of those chosen on the respective campuses, just as you have with the athlete awards will come to the full SEC Provost and there would be the outstanding SEC faculty member chosen, and that will be a $10,000 award.
I think these are two important initiatives the SEC is making particularly in the academic realm. The last thing that I did have on this list is trustee selection, but I imagine that you all have been following that either on the Web or on TV or whatever, so it’s in process, let’s put it that way. Any questions for me? (pause) Well I wish you all the best, you are the future of Auburn University so continue to build its national and international reputation. Thank you very, very much. (applause)
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Mazey.
The next item on the agenda is nomination of Senate committees. This will be presented by Larry Crowley, Secretary-Elect. [15:06]
Larry Crowley, Secretary-Elect: Good afternoon. We have these senate names to bring to you from Rules committee we only have two that we have not filled, and Russ Muntifering was great leadership of the committee which is made up of the executive committee in addition to James Goldstein, Larry Teeter, Gwyn Thomas, Evert Duin, and Barbara Kemppainen and Andrew McLelland. And these are the names, they have previously been posted to the Web. There has been one late minute change and that was Curriculum and Gen ED committee; Steven Stuckwhich was initially posted, he dropped out and was replaced by Ted Kilgore. So these are the committee names here. As member of the Rules committee I move to adopt this slate of nominees.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Is there any discussion of the slate of volunteers? Since this is a recommendation from the Rules committee it does not require a second. We will vote on all volunteers at one time.
Check to make sure your clickers are turned on. All in favor press A, all opposed press B.
The vote is 70 for, 2 against. The nominations carry. This sounds easy, but the Rules committee works very hard to get these nominees and some of you know how hard we work because you’ve gotten our calls and e-mails. Thank you to Larry and Russ.
The next action item is a proposal to create a new graduate project grade. It will be presented for a vote by George Flowers, Dean of the Graduate school. It was presented as information at the May meeting. [17:50]
George Flowers, Dean of the Graduate school: This proposal had been presented earlier. A little bit of background, historically project courses have been given a letter grade and there has been also the option of a non-graded, no grade for the projects, this had been used primarily by civil engineering, in fact that’s the only unit that I’m aware of using the no-grade option and they had been using it because the projects would extend out over the course of multiple semesters and it really was not appropriate to grade them each semester so the real grade that was coming was the final evaluation on the project.
The students who have been taking that project course have been unable to qualify for the 7@@0 and the 8@@0 as well, which requires that the student take at least one hour of graded course work in addition to the 7@@0 and the 8@@0, so this proposal is aimed at correcting that. Providing an additional option in addition to the traditional letter grade or “SU” also having a “GP” which is very similar to the thesis dissertation the “TD” type of grade. So that’s where we stand on this.
This had been approved by the Graduate Council and also by the Academic Affairs committee of the Senate and I would like to request approval adoption of this change.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Since this is a recommendation from a Senate committee, it does not require a second. At this time I open the floor for comments.
Seeing none, we will now vote.
Check to see if your clicker is turned on.
All those in favor press A, those opposed press B.
The vote is 73 for, 2 against. The motion passes.
The last action item is a proposed policy on Student Evaluation of courses. This will be presented by Kevin Phelps, Chair Teaching Effectiveness committee. This was also presented as information at the May meeting.
Kevin Phelps, Chair Teaching Effectiveness committee: Thank you, just a little background. I’ve asked a member of the committee, Rich Penaskovic, to come up and help answer any questions that might come up. He was instrumental in coming up with the first draft of the survey that the committee came up with. Just briefly the committee was charged with replacing the University of Washington survey and the recommendations in terms of the process by which the survey was conducted and coming up with a replacement. This is the fruit of that study, we worked very hard on looking at all aspects of student evaluations in terms of coming up with the appropriate questions and Rich has been very helpful in that regard.
At this time I guess I would ask that the policy by approved by the Senate, I move for adoption, excuse me.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any comments or questions?
James Goldstein, senator, English: I wanted to thank the committee for their hard work. I think it will be good for us to move to the online system. I would hope in the future we might consider the possibility at some other institutions with online student evaluations have done to consider making it more mandatory for the students, that grades don’t get reported for example unless they fill these things out, but that would be for the future. I do support the policy.
I wanted to just point out that there are some things in this policy that’s being proposed that conflict with the existing Faculty Handbook policy in chapter 4 of the Handbook and my understanding is that any conflicts would be superseded by this policy document. So for example to now require having an evaluation done for every course that would be something that would be a change from current policy that mandates it one semester and recommends it for other semesters. But I think it’s a good policy, I just wanted to propose an amendment though to make a little bit more clarification about the purposes of the student evaluations and their use, if you have that to project… [24:00]otherwise I can read it outloud.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Go ahead and read it James. (the overhead is not projecting)
James Goldstein, senator, English: I’m proposing that this amendment be inserted at the beginning of the policy document. It would read as follows:
This policy mandates the collection of student-generated data on a regular basis, but these data are not to be used to rank-order faculty, the data must not supplant other ongoing methods of teaching evaluation, and the data should be only one of several forms of teaching information gathered on a regular basis to assess teaching effectiveness.
Most of this already conforms with what is in the Faculty Handbook which lists other kinds of materials for evaluating teaching besides student evaluations, so this would just help reiterate that there are other ways of evaluating teaching in addition to the student evaluations. Thank you.
Claire Crutchley, chair: James, where is this? I can see the paragraphs, I apologize.
James Goldstein, senator, English: This would go at the top of the document.
Claire Crutchley, chair: At the beginning of the document before Purpose?
James Goldstein, senator, English: Yes that will work.
Claire Crutchley, chair: So before Purpose, what you are proposing is to put and I will restate this.
This policy mandates the collection of student-generated data on a regular basis, but these data are not to be used to rank-order faculty, the data must not supplant other ongoing methods of teaching evaluation, and the data should be only one of several forms of teaching information gathered on a regular basis to assess teaching effectiveness.
And this is proposed to be put above the Purpose of Student Evaluations. Do we have a second? Yes. Is there any discussion about the amendment? [26:48]
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries and Allied Acqualture: (Something happened to the mike, there is no voice recorded.) I believe he proposed to amend the amendment by adding “as the only mechanism” to the pharase “but these data are not [incert here] to be used to rank-order faculty,”
Claire Crutchley, chair: Do you (James) want to accept that to the wording?
James Goldstein, senator, English: I’ll accept that.
Claire Crutchley, chair: So instead of it saying “these data are not to be used to rank-order faculty” it will read “these data are not the only mechanism to be used to rank-order faculty.” Is that the exact words?
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries and Allied Acqualture: Fine with me.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Other comments on the amendment?
Rich Penaskovic: James our committee met yesterday to discuss your amended changes and we could not agree to agree with you or not, the committee was split. So we don’t really care too much about this we want to see that this document is passed as a whole. So if the body of senators wants to go on with your amendment, that’s fine with us.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Rich, are there any other comments on the amendment?
So we will vote on the amendment. We are not voting on the teaching evaluation policy you are simply voting on the amendment:
Bob Locy, biological sciences, not a senator: Madame chair, I’m not a senator, but I’d like to speak if I could.
Claire Crutchley, chair: You’re speaking on the amendment Bob? Please introduce yourself.
Bob Locy, biological sciences, not a senator: I think this is a good amendment it goes in the right direction I’m just not sure that it goes far enough in addressing some of deficiencies that I find in this whole amendment so I’d like to urge people to consider to find ways to take it beyond where this takes it. Thank you.
Claire Crutchley, chair: So I’m going to read the amendment one more time and ask you to vote on the amendment, we are not voting on the policy.
So before Purpose of Student Evaluations incert:
This policy mandates the collection of student-generated data on a regular basis, but these data are not to be used as the only mechanism to rank-order faculty, the data must not supplant other ongoing methods of teaching evaluation, and the data should be only one of several forms of teaching information gathered on a regular basis to assess teaching effectiveness.
So now we are voting on this amendment, again not the resolution. If you would like this to be the top of the student evaluation policy vote A, yes, if you do not want this document to be amended vote B, no.
The vote is 60 for, 14 against. The amendment passes.
Are there any comments on the amended policy?
Ruth Crocker, history, senator: I polled my department colleagues on this proposal and they had some concerns about it, none of them were in favor of adopting it. One I would particularly like to share has commented, “I have some experience from North Carolina State University were it was used.” And he says it was a real disappointment, student evaluation was very low and despite constant prompting and reminding from professors students were very slow to do it. So I wonder if the …, I don’t know if there was a clause in this proposal that would make it mandatory for students to fill in the survey before they get their final grade? That is one comment.
Claire Crutchley, chair: That is not in the policy.
Ruth Crocker, history, senator: At NC State they found it necessary to do that.
Rich Penaskovic: In regard to Ruth Crocker’s comment we considered the fact that students may be slow to fill out these evaluation forms, we feel though that having it online may make it easier for students to fill them out. I think at some universities students don’t get their grades until they fill it out., but we thought that was a bit drastic.
Guy Rohrbaugh, senator from Philosophy: I wast to express a little dissapointment at seeing this come back kind of unaltered after all of last month’s comments. I think it’s much improved by the last amendment, but I guess I’ll just reiterate my words from last time that the final paragraph strikes me as micromanagement, to supplant decisions that we hire hopefully able administrators to make. It just strikes me as overly specific. Calls about does it have to be every class everytime or once a year, how many questions? No more than 15. This policy is supposed to be a framework for people to make decisions and this goes beyond that and I’m going to vote against it.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Steve Brown, senator from political science: I was not here last month when this was an information item so I have a quick question. Given the last paragraph as well as the amended information that we put in today, this does not preclude a department from using a whole other instrument. We can use this and we will use it for the online portion, but could a department have another instrument which it did mandate that the students all fill out before they got their grades and written differently and maybe it would be completely paper and it was not online? What is the extent that a department can change or alter the instrument itself?
Kevin Phelps: The policy allows colleges and departments to modify the survey instrument as needed of course in terms of representative faculty. You can use this instrument, actually the software allows you to use many other instruments as well, mid-term surveys, other things. If you want to do more with paper and pencil this doesn’t preclude other surveys in any way.
Steve Brown, senator from political science: That was the concern of my colleagues, and this probably came out in the last meeting, if it’s strictly voluntary you get the people who really love the professor and the people who hate a professor. And when it’s mandatory you get more of a an even keel of what those things are so if we could have our own instrument in addition to this, that we could make mandatory and get a sense of all the students in the class. So if you are saying that’s okay, then I think that’s what they would like.
Kevin Phelps: We discussed various incentives and looked at what other universities have done in terms of incentives to increase participation. Some of them are draconian as in you don’t get your grades and that is not common. There are other incentives that proved to be very successful in increasing student participation in these. [35:53] Until we see what participation rates we get I think it’s premature to talk about which incentives to use until it’s implemented.
Mike Baginski, senator Electrical and Computer Engineering: I’d like to make 2 points. First of all I’ve been involved with surveys with the university with the administrator evaluations, and even at this university with the faculty here, to get 25% or more with the faculty – the more conscientious people – that’s saying a lot just if you are assuming people are going to do it. I’ve experienced this. If you are going to expect students to do this without holding them accountable, in other words if you don’t make them do this before they get their grade, I don’t think you are going to see much of a response. That’s my own personal opinion. I know right now with the student evaluations, when they are handed out, we get upwards of 80–90% response, at least I do for mine no matter how large the class is because they have to do it in a sense, they are there, they are a captive audience. I’m concerned about that.
My second comment, Herb Rotfeld and I had a discussion about the use of these student evaluations. He was really the person who wanted to be here and bring up some of these issues, but he sent me some literature that countered what you handed out earlier about these being very good metrics for establishing teaching effectiveness and I’m sorry I didn’t bring it with me. I guess my concern is I see the real problem here, no matter what you do, it won’t be enough or somebody’s going to find fault with it, but I wondering if there shouldn’t be at least something else other than it’s mandated by the university. I don’t know what that could be. I’m sure the committee saw what Herb sent. Are you familiar with what Herb sent? Okay. So you have already seen these things, have you thought of anything else that can be used or not?
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Rich Penaskovic: You know there have been almost 2,000 studies dealing with student evaluations. Did you see the handout we gave today the one by McKeachie at Michigan who’s a big name in his field and he says “student evaluations are the single most valid source of data on teaching effectiveness”
Mike Baginski, senator Electrical and Computer Engineering: I know he said that, I’m very familiar.
Rich Penaskovic: Many, most of these studies have shown that to be the case. There’s not going to be a perfect system anywhere, and we’ve done the best we can. We’ve discussed this all year, our committee has, and this seems to be the best that we can do really. We’re aware of the fact that there are about 15 different strategies to measure effective teaching. Peer evaluations, a lot of departments use those. There’s self ratings, we were only charged with looking at student evaluations.
Mike Baginski, senator Electrical and Computer Engineering: I understand your dilemma and actually your problem, what I’m more concerned about, I guess what everybody’s concerned about who is a faculty member, that the harder you make a course, I think this is realistic, the more difficult you make it, really in fact they are probably getting more out of it. They are learning more, comprehensive finals are always going to be better than finals that just cover a short portion of material for retention. I don’t think there is a question about that, but when you do that I am almost convinced, now I’m not an expert in this, you are going to get lower student evaluations. It’s just the way it is. Maybe I’m the only person that’s observed this, but I’m saying this for the sake of all faculty here, I think I represent them with what I’m saying. Probably at least there should be one other thing that’s included with this. That’s my own comments about this. [40:44]
Steve Stuckwich, substitute senator from department of Mathematics: Since I’m a substitute I’m not sure, is this replacing stuff in the Faculty Handbook or added to the Faculty Handbook?
Claire Crutchley, chair: If it conflicts with anything in the Facutly Handbook it will be changed in the Faculty Handbook, but probably the policy as is will be put in the Faculty Handbook and we would refer it to the Facutly Handbook Committee.
Steve Stuckwich, substitute senator from department of Mathematics: That will be submitted then to the faculty Senate…
Claire Crutchley, chair: Usually only if it a substantive change
Steve Stuckwich, substitute senator from department of Mathematics: I personally don’t like to give the administration open-ended right to just change the Faculty Handbook with out the Senate approving it. When I’ve been in the Senate before in the past, they have the Faculty Handbook, the current statement, the new statement, what’s replaced, what isn’t. I basically just disagree saying let’s just put this in the Faculty Handbook and hope for the best. So my faculty also have voted on this, and we were overwhelmingly against it. I also had one person that did a lot of research on this, Dr. Meir in our department, and he did a study from the Navel Academy I believe it was one of the military academies that showed that there is a correlation between how high the evaluations are in the first course and how well the students do in the second course and they are inversely correlated, in other words, Professors that get high evaluations give high grades to their students, those students tend to do worse in the next course. So I’m basically against the proposal.
Rich Penaskovic: You know we have a Faculty Handbook committee, I think it consists mainly of faculty who change the Handbook. So it’s really Faculty driven, it’s not like the administration is telling them what to do. [ 42:27]
Steve Stuckwich, substitute senator from department of Mathematics: In the past when I was in the Senate there was always faculty, what was changed and what wasn’t so we could see what was going to be put in the Faculty Handbook, so that’s one of my objections that I have also.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Do I have any other senators that would like to speak?
Bob Locy, biological sciences, not a senator: I’d like to say 2 or 3 things that really parallel what Dr. Brown said and Dr. Baginski said to some extent from a little bit different perspective. This first thing is and also Dr. Stuckwich, the language in the Faculty Handbook very clearly says that the Board mandates that we do peer evaluations of teaching and the university has spent, in my opinion, an exorbitant amount of money on the student teaching evaluations that we’ve had for the last several years as we adopted the Washington State instrument some time ago and according to Dr. Phelps at the last Senate meeting the decision driving moving away from that is a financial one. Now the way I see that is we adapted that policy to support evaluations of teaching and teaching improvement on the basis of the fact that that was an instrument that was supposed to give us better feedback from our students. Some years later I think we all look back and see that we really didn’t get better input from our students and I would have preferred to see the team teaching effectiveness committee bring forward a report that would have suggested how we could better allocate those dollars that we agreed to spend, what was it, 3 or 4 years ago, better allocate those dollars to improve our teaching effectiveness as they were not doing the job as they were intended. What I find is a shortfall here is that we are just simply proposing to use another, in many people’s opinion, questionably bad approach to doing student evaluations of teaching for one that just didn’t work out to the way is was supposed to before. We were told that there were multiple forms and we could get multiple kinds of evaluations depending on the nature of the course we taught. Not the case. So we propose to replace it with what I see as a very rigid instrument that doesn’t give the faculty and the administrators involved any flexibility. It doesn’t allow us or it gives us limited flexibility, I’m sorry, to be fair. And I think what we need if we have to do it online, then so be it for financial reasons, but we need an instrument that’s got some flexibility in it so that it can meet the needs of an engineer, or the biologist, or a mathematician, or a philosopher depending on who has what specific needs in their class. And it can be tailor made and certainly you can sit down with you administrator and decide what questions would be good ones to ask to get the kind of feedback that will improve your teaching. And in that spirit I think we would get a much better resolution than this resolution offers. That having been said I’ll sit down. Thank you.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Kevin Phelps: Thank you Bob. The whole point of the committee was to try to give exactly that flexibility to the faculty to the departments and to the colleges. That’s why we allow, the statement says that there is no flexibility there is one mandated survey instrument in current policy. We are saying that we don’t believe one size fits all. If you really want to be able to use this instrument to improve teaching you have to be able to tailor it to the needs of the different departments, colleges, and faculty.
The whole point of this, the main change is that. Online evaluations are very easy to add questions, modify questions and changes questions, we do however put some constraints on it. The committee strongly feels that if you get the survey instrument, if it’s too long you will suppress student participation and we don’t want to do that, because that undermines the validity/reliability of the data. So that is why we limit it at 15. Truthfully if your college comes up with a plan or a survey that goes past that and you really have a good reason for making it much longer, I’m sure the committee would approve any such exemption, but the main point is the parameters are there to give guidelines for faculty who are making their own or modifying the existing survey instrument.
So that’s exactly what we are trying to give the faculty and colleges is that flexibility. [47:53]
Rich Penaskovic: Let me make another comment. In my classes I give 4 student evaluations, I give one about 4 weeks into the course I ask students to take out a piece of paper and comment on the course asking open ended questions such as how are you doing in this course? What do you think of the books? What did you think of the last test? I give it after my first test, if you were teaching this course would you do anything differently? Because then I get feedback initially to find out if I’m on the right track or not, then I apply the student comments on one sheet of paper and put them into 3 colums; positive, negative, and suggestions for improvement. I get very good feedback that way and I give that after the first mid-term exam and after the third test and then I give the final one. The final one that you are talking about now isn’t really good for the students you have presently, next semester you have different students with different needs. So the assessment doesn’t really help you improve, so there’s nothing holding you back from asking for student evaluations early on in the course and getting valuable feedback. That’s the only way you know if you are getting through or not because are our clients, our customers.
Jim Groccia, not a senator, Director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning: I’m not an expert on teaching evaluations I did stay at a Holiday Inn Select last night however. I have been looking at the evaluation of teaching on an off for probably 30 years and the discussion of the evaluation of teaching is guaranteed to be the second most controversial topic that is brought up to faculty. The first being parking issues. If you look at the incredible body of research on the evaluation of teaching this is probably the single most researched aspect of university teaching and learning existant that’s out there. You will be able to find, I will guarantee, any position you would like to hold on the evaluation of teaching you will find empirical evidence to support that position. If you believe that left-handed blonde professors get higher evaluations than right-handed brown haired, bald professors, you can find those data. So what’s important is to look at the body of research, to look at meta-analyses of the various analyses, various studies. And there have been a number of those, some significant meta-analyses of teaching evaluations that have been conducted over the last 30 years. If you look at those studies of thousands of studies and you look at the methodology, sampling procedures, all of what we would consider good empirical research design issues, and you parcel out what are good studies from what are questionable studies what you will find, almost universally, is that what you will find supports McKeachie. Student evaluations of teaching are the most reliable and valid measure of what we do in front of our students to impart learning. That’s not to mean that they are the only measure that we should use. And I think the Handbook specifically states that multiple measures should be used. One of which is peer review, teaching portfolio, some other documentation, unfortunately we rely on one single measure, we rely on some numerical metrics and we form all our decisions based on a kind of unitary snapshot of what we do.
However, so a teaching evaluation should be necessary but it’s not sufficient, it’s like drinking milk for strong bones, it’s necessary but not necessarily sufficient to develop strong bones. So one point I’d like to make is the evaluation of teaching, student feedback is an essential component. And they are the most reliable and valid measure we have. Second point I’d like to make. There has been a recent study and I don’t have it with me, I didn’t think to bring it, that looks at this question of who responds to electronic surveys; are the discontented, dissatisfied students more likely than the average or the happy student. What this meta-analysis of those studies found was, it was the more happy student who actually responded at a higher rate than the dissatisfied, unhappy student. So that’s kind of a myth that we think because we provide the opportunity to complain, people will take the opportunity to complain we forget the fact that if we provide the opportunity for students to give feedback about a successful learning experience they will also do that.
Now I probably cannot convince you of that, but that’s what some recent research recently said. I personally did a survey 10 years ago at the University of Missori where we moved to an online survey format and we tried to address the question of response rate. Do response rates go down? And if they do go down is that data that those responses yield significantly different than the written response rate. So I won’t go into the methodology, but we gave paper and pencil, electronic, we compared the two and yes in fact the response rate did go down. About 33% compared to 70% in the in-class paper and pencil. The second question was, what was the quality of those responses? What we found was we did a qualitative study of the verbal, written, and numerical responses and compared them to the written responses, we found no specifically significant differences in what they were saying. In fact what we found was the electronic online version responses contained more written comments and richer written comments about more issues related to teaching and learning. So the online provided a format for students to provide greater and more complex and richer verbal written comments.
That’s all I want to say to that. I don’t want to address the specific instrument, I think the Teaching Effectiveness Committee tried to build in flexibility in this process.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. [55:03]
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: I just have one other point of clarification that I need. Given some things that Rich just said and also Jim just a second ago, and that is I don’t think any of us dispute the need for student evaluations. I think it’s been very helpful to my teaching, mid-course as you’ve mentioned and what McKeachie talks about is great because it does help us become better teachers. The point is how do you get that information from a voluntary survey? If everybody in your class will respond to those things, saying the good, the bad, and the ugly, and they respond and that’s not always going to happen with a voluntary thing.
The second thing my department is concerned about is what happens to this information? If there is a policy and as I read the language here again it talks about university wide questions, if I have several mid-course evaluations like you are talking about, my students telling me what’s great what’s working what’s not working so I have a broad array of information, but then on the instrument, on the survey, on the university wide questions I get voluntary answers of people that hated my class, when it comes up for merit pay increases the information requested by the dean’s offices the provost’s office, which do they get? The internal stuff that I did in my class or the policy the university wide questions that are online?
Rich Penaskovic: You know what I do, I handed in to my department head some of the evaluations that I received during the semester as well for him to look at so he gets an overview of the course as a whole. So there is nothing forbidding you from doing that.
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: I guess my question is, is your sense of all of these evaluative measures, the sum total, will be put in that packet that goes up to the Dean’s office or the Provost’s office. In other words we said that this is only one instrument and that will be for purposes of advancement, it will be only one instrument? We can put all of the evaluations–peer evaluations and everything together will go into what ever they ask for. Is that your thinking?
Rich Penaskovic: No it won’t go to the dean’s office but the department head could use that in writing his report.
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: Well it says it will be made available to the relevant deans and the provost’s office has requested, so is it the university wide instrument only that will be permitted to go forward or all the stuff?
Kevin Phelps: The current policy states that there is one instrument that’s used for student evaluations. And it says that summary data, what ever that means and no one can tell me exactly what that means, will be reported to relevant dean and provost. That’s the current one.
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: Well this is too actually, it says summaries for results for university wide questions…
Kevin Phelps: University wide only with respect to those questions that are university wide. University wide means those that are put out by the university committee if you use those. And that’s summary data so it does not change with respect to the questions put out by the committee, it does not change the reporting requirements for those questions and that’s all that it addresses. The question also goes on to say that colleges/departments/faculty those questions that they put in, they have…I have to look at the exact wording there…those units that put forth their own questions, they are responsible for deciding who sees what in terms of summary data. It’s no longer mandated that it go up to… (dean’s & provost’s offices).
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: Okay, I think I understand that from before but in reading this I am just concerned that if there is a policy and an instrument, and that’s the official instrument even though there may be other internal things within the department or even the college that you use to better teacher effectiveness, if there is one single instrument and a set of single questions and that’s all that is forwarded up the ladder then I have a much greater concern about that because there are so many ways to measure teacher effectiveness as Rich already pointed out.
Rich Penaskovic: In my experience my department head sends up a very simple thing about what the person has done to the dean. It’s not very rich at all in terms of what a person has actually accomplished.
Steve Brown, senator, Political Science: Thank you.
Kevin Phelps: I found in the last sentence it says, “may change the survey instrument as needed or responsible for determining the reporting of relevant results,” so that says basically it’s up to the departments and colleges. [59:59]
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Two things, one an understanding of statistics and it may be true that the reduction of the sample size as long as it’s drawn unbiasedly doesn’t change the meaning, it does change the standard error. So the power of statistic conclusions based on smaller sample size, even not biased make it more difficult to make statistical conclusions. We already have a problem in some of our classes, particularly large lecture classes, which is student attendance. And you can’t survey someone who doesn’t attend. The size of the class is difficult to take attendance or mandate it. So some of those classes we only have 30 to 40% response rates in the surveys. Should these onlines do what they suggested, to drop it even further, I worried that it would begin to form a sample which is frankly too small to engage in statistical inference from. So given some other universities made it mandated, I want to introduce and amendment to this stating that student participation in the survey is mandatory.
Claire Crutchley, chair: The motion dies for lack of a second.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: You didn’t call for a second.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Does anybody want to second? Yes we have a second.
So the amendment is that…Michael can you go back to the microphone so I can write it down.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I don’t want to mandate it I think the committee can do that, precisely what the mechanism is, but I think there should be language if this is a valuable instrument for feedback then student participation should be mandatory in it. Since all faculty and all classes must participate in it I don’t see any reason why all students shouldn’t have to participate in it.
Claire Crutchley, chair: I don’t understand the amendment.
Rich Penaskovic: How can we make students attend class, we have no say really how many students…
Mike Stern, senator, economics: This is online.
Student participation in the survey is mandatory. I want to add that statement
Claire Crutchley, chair: So the amendment is that “Student participation in the survey is mandatory.” Where would you like to put this in the policy?
Mike Stern, senator, economics: You can add it with the bullet points if you want. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s stated in the document if it’s policy. Just add it in the paragraph where it says, “every course must undergo student evaluation each time it is offered. (incert) Student participation in the survey is mandatory. So add it after that sentence that says every course must undergo it and students must participate.
Claire Crutchley, chair: So the proposed amendment that, “Student participation in the survey is mandatory” following “every course must undergo student evaluation of instruction each time it is offered.” Is there any discussion on the amendment?
Rich Penaskovic: The only question I have is how are you going to enforce this?
Larry Crowley, secretary-elect: That was my discussion. My concern is: I have 5 kids it’s pretty easy to tell them to do something it’s hard to get them to do something. My concern is that language without some type of enforcement is kind of empty. So if there is some mechanism in which to mandate or require the students to do that I’d like to see it added to the motion.
James Goldstein, senator from English: I appreciate that without an enforcement mechanism it doesn’t have teeth, but I want to speak in favor of the motion because when we present the survey online there can be a statement that tells the student that you’re supposed to do this. And we will worry about enforcement another time, but another advantage of including this in the document we are voting on is that it would give a clear direction to the committee in the future to revisit this issue about improvements to the policy including the possibility of a real enforcement mechanism. But we don’t have to figure out an enforcement mechanism today in order to pass the motion itself, and we absolutely have to pass that main motion today. I just want to reiterate that I support the policy that the committee came up with and I think it’s important that we get this item done today before we run out of time, but I do support the amendment.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Any other comments on the amendment? [1:05:32]
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Just to response regarding enforcement. The Handbook in many policies state all kinds of things without outlining consequences for failure to do so. In other words I’ve asked many times what is the enforcement mechanism for all kinds of policies we have. We don’t usually lay it out. It’s incumbent upon the people who come up with it to come up with reasonable things and I understand 100%, but without any statement in policy that we should be doing something, it just becomes a free for all, nobody oversees it. For instance in the policies on annual reporting, it states that you should do it every year and do it by April 30, have your meeting and everything, yet there are frequent violations of that, we don’t outline all the consequences should you violate it, but if you don’t have some deadline or some statement of goal or statement of policy then it becomes a free for all, so having some statement will push us to come up with means of implementing it that will get us a reasonable participation out of the students, so we don’t loose our sample sizes.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Any other comments on the amendment?
Now we are voting on the amendment. We are not voting on the policy. Make sure your clickers are turned on. The amendment is to incert after “offered.” “Student participation in the survey is mandatory.”
Vote A for yes and B for no. A=47, B=28. The amendment passes.
Any further comments on the amended policy, it has two amendments to it.
David King, senator from Geology and Geography: I would just ask that the Teaching Effectiveness Committee give some guidance to the administrative leaders about evaluations because what if one or two people in the class respond to this online and so one’s evaluation for the entire course would be based on one person. That there be some sort threshold cutoff so if the responses are below a certain level there just was no evaluation. And think through scenarios like that so that we don’t just have data submitted that’s obviously flawed and I don’t think this amendment that just passed is going to solve that problem.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you, we will forward that to the Teaching Effectiveness Committee to ask for a policy on low participation in the survey.
Bob Locy, not a senator from biological sciences: I’d like to add to Dr. King’s suggestions for the Teaching Effectiveness Committee. Since the current Faculty Handbook mandates that we have peer evaluations of teaching and since we’ve spent so much time here this afternoon and across the last several Senate meetings discussing how to do student evaluations of teaching, I’d like for you to carry back to the Teaching Effectiveness Committee that they look into how some of the resources could be spent that are being saved from the lowered cost of the teaching evaluations to putting in place some type of a mandatory peer evaluations system to parallel this one so that we finally conform to what the Board of Trustees asked us to do many years ago.
Claire Crutchley, chair: I will forward that. Any other comments on the amended policy?
Now I will call for a vote. The policy is posted there are two amendments. One is making participation mandatory and the other is an introduction to the policy as proposed by Dr. Goldstein. So please vote on the amended policy. Vote A, yes you support the amended policy or B for no you do not support the amended policy.
A= 44, B=27 The amendment passes. Thank you very much to the Teaching Effectiveness Committee.
Our final item on the agenda is an information item on replacing the classroom management system Blackboard. It will be presented jointly by Jane Kuehne, chair of the Academic Computing committee and Kathy McClelland, manager of the Instructional Media Group. [1:11:02]
Kathy McClelland, manager of the Instructional Media Group: What we have going for us at Auburn is a situation where we need to replace the existing Learning Management System (LMS)
Blackboard kind of did us in a while back by changing their plans. Originally Blackboard was going to take the best of the Web CT product Vista which is what we are currently using, combine it with their own Blackboard system and come up with product NG Next Generation. Some how those plans got lost they instead substituted Blackboard 9. When we got to look at it we were disappointed. It would be several steps backwards for Auburn, it does not have half the tools that Vista does, so we started to decide or try to decide what it is we needed to do. Further Blackboard announced that they would not license or support Vista, the system we are currently using, beginning January 2013.
We established, we being Bliss Bailey, OIT, Nick Backshieder, and I, and the associate Deans for instruction in the Colleges a Learning Management System Working Group (LMSWG). We were charged to find a replacement for Blackboard. We don’t have a lot of time, we need to move quickly. I have been working with a group of very dedicated, mostly faculty, some IT staff who have been looking at all of the possible options. Most of them are here today mostly sitting in the back of the room, I’ll ask them to stand. Any and all of these people can answer questions for you.
What we did was establish a timeline as a group as to what we needed to do. IMG had done some prep work and provided a resource Web site for the LMSWG. We hit the ground running, we had identified 5 learning management systems being used at schools as big as Auburn in the SEC that seemed to be the most popular that were getting the most press. We looked at these 5 systems, and what we decided to do was more or less run this search as if it were a search as if it were a hire for Auburn. We invited each of the Companies to do an online Web introduction for us that we watched, that we recorded, that we made available to faculty and after getting some response and some feedback chose the 2 that looked best for Auburn. Those two were the Desire2 Learn product and Canvas.
We invited the two to campus for presentations to faculty. We ran session live, we recorded them, made those recordings available and did get quite a bit of feedback from them people who participated. Overwhelmingly, the faculty who participated told us they like Canvas best. I know most of you may not have seen Canvas yet, but I can tell you it is elegant in its simplicity. It includes tools that we do not have with Vista, but it includes everything that we do have with Vista. It’s a product that I think everybody will come to love. Jane’s been using it.
Jane Kuehne, chair of the Academic Computing committee: I’ve been using Canvas this summer just as a test trial with one of my graduate students and found the conversion from a specific class, I’m actually teaching an evalutation class that I taught in Web CT, what we have now Vista. The conversion from there to Canvas was pretty seamless, I was surprised at how easy it went. Really not a whole lot of work, I actually enjoyed working in the Learning Management System. The students that I showed previously when we were talking about all this, I talked to my students about it too because they are going to be using it and they were really impressed with Canvas. They were excited and asked, “When can we move?”
The current student I am working with is a test on their free site, by the way you can get a free site and test it out yourself, he really likes it. He thinks it’s very intuitive and a nice change, it has a lot to offer.
This is the resolution, the recommendation that we made as part of our LMSWG. [1:18:00] There is a long report that I think was sent out. Based on feedback obtained during the onsite presentations and from online feedback forms as well as on LMSWG members review of feedback and their own evaluations of each LMS, the LMSWG unanimously recommends that Auburn University adopt Instructure Canvas as the LMS to replace Blackboard Vista, further the LMSWG recommends that the transition to Canvas begin immediately. After being on this committee for a little over a semester, meeting weekly, then I also talked, via e-mail, with the Academic Computing committee and everyone who responded was in support. All faculty that responded were in support, only 2 didn’t and one was on sabbatical. The Academic Computing committee is also in support of this recommendation.
Kathy McClelland, manager of the Instructional Media Group: If anyone has questions we’d be glad to try and answer them. The one thing I do want to share with you about Canvas is just a tiny bit about it’s background.
Canvas was developed as a class project by 2 students who were fed up with Blackboard and the other Learning Management Systems, so it is developed from the student perspective and it’s very forgiving for students. I’ve done quite a bit of research into it, I’ve attended a couple of webinars, it’s a new company, we know that; what we are hearing is that students don’t need and don’t even want training in it. It’s that intuitive for them to use. Maybe not so much for faculty, but the transition, that’s my job and I promise it will be as painless as possible.
What we want to do is to give you the chance to ask any questions you might have about anything you are worried about with this new LMS and see what you have to say.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Any questions or comments for Kathy or Jane? I do want to say that the Senate was involved in talking about developing this and I think it was done in a very faculty open way. Any faculty who wanted to participate did. I saw Canvas and I’d have to say I was biased and I said “wow.” Comments or questions? Thank you.
At our meeting I pointed out that Canvas had e-portfolio in this.
That is the last item on the agenda.
Does anybody have any unfinished business?
I have one piece of new business because this is my last meeting as Senate Chair. I would like to present the gavel to Ann Beth Presley who becomes your Chair on July 1.
If there is no other business, then the meeting is now adjourned. Be sure to return the clickers on your way out. Thank you and thank you for your service on the Senate this year. [1:21:48]