PREAMBLE This document has evolved from
and supersedes the 1980 "University Policy on the Encouragement of Teaching
Excellence by Means of the Evaluation of Teaching". The procedures
and guidelines contained in this document are also, in part, an implementation
of the 1992 "McMaster University Revised Policy and Regulations with
Respect to Academic Appointment, Tenure and Promotion". In addition,
they incorporate much of the spirit and many of the recommendations of
the 1992 report of the University Committee on Teaching and Learning entitled,
"Recognition
and Reward of Teaching at McMaster University" as well as parts of
the 1993 report of the Senate Task Force on Quality Assurance.
Rewards
and Recognition for Good Teaching
The University provides a number
of incentives for good teaching, including promotion through the professorial
ranks, the granting of tenure, salary increments based on merit, and University
teaching awards (the President's Awards). In addition to providing incentives,
these processes allow opportunities for the improvement of teaching through
formal and informal feedback. Such feedback is particularly important for
new faculty, at the beginning of their teaching careers, where it can and
should provide a useful contribution to the development of teaching skills.
Assessment of teaching for salary
review occurs throughout the career of all faculty, and assessment for
promotion and tenure touches all faculty at the appropriate stages of their
careers. The general expectations regarding teaching effectiveness and
illustrations of how this can be evaluated are contained in Section III,
clauses 4 to 8 of the "Policy and Regulations with Respect to Academic
Appointment, Tenure and Promotion". Procedures for such assessments
are described below. In general, they involve two components, assessment
by students and assessment by peers. The process of peer assessment is
a cooperative one, involving the faculty member and the department chair
and possibly other departmental colleagues and/or external assessors. In
the following two sections, guidelines are presented for each of these
two kinds of assessment.
Guidelines
for Student Evaluations
Over the past decade, every
department in the University has developed considerable experience in the
formulation, administration and interpretation of student evaluation questionnaires.
In recent years, some consensus has developed, at least within Faculties,
regarding the form that such questionnaires should take. The following
guidelines are intended to consolidate this consensus and to prescribe
uniform procedures for the administration of student questionnaires. It
is the responsibility of the Dean of each Faculty to ensure that these
guidelines are followed.
Each Faculty shall develop and
maintain a standard, Faculty-wide student evaluation questionnaire. If
necessary, this questionnaire may be customized for individual departments,
maintaining a common format.
All courses should be evaluated.
Student evaluation by questionnaire shall be performed for every undergraduate
course (including summer courses), toward the end of the course, every
time the course is offered. Students should be informed at the beginning
of each course that they will be expected to participate in these evaluations.
The same evaluation procedure may be used for graduate courses, or the
students may be interviewed by a representative of the department chair.
It should be made clear to the
students that the instructor is not involved in the administration or the
analysis of student questionnaires. Questionnaires should be distributed
and collected during class time by someone other than the instructor .
The instructor shall not be present during this procedure. Completed questionnaires
should be returned by someone other than the instructor to the departmental
office.
Information from the questionnaires
will be consolidated by the department into a report, consisting of a tabulation
of numerical data on the form containing the questions, together with an
evaluative summary of written comments. A copy of this r eport will be
used by the department as input for promotion, tenure, and/or salary reviews,
and a copy will be given to the instructor after the final grades have
been submitted.
Guidelines for Peer
Evaluation of Teaching
Peer evaluation is done by
the department chair or a delegate of the department chair by means of
interviews with the instructor and, where appropriate, with students and
colleagues. It may also involve attending one or more classes of the instructor
under review. In addition, some departments may choose to make use of external
reviewers. These formal reviews of teaching are part of the tenure and
promotion process. However, they should also be performed periodically
for purposes of salary review.
In order to be effective, peer
review requires some degree of self-evaluation by the instructor as well
as the collection by the instructor of relevant information and material.
This information and material should be organized into a "teaching portfolio",
which is primarily intended for use in the interview with the chair or
the chair's representative. Alternatively, it should be possible, when
appropriate, to organize this material into a package which could be sent
out to an external reviewer. Advice about what kinds of material might
usefully be incorporated into a teaching portfolio is available to instructors
from the Instructional Development Centre. However, to a good approximation,
this portfolio should contain whatever information is felt to be relevant
to a review of the instructor's teaching accomplishments and effectiveness,
such as course outlines, copies of examinations, etc. A departmental interviewer
should insure that all material that the instructor feels is relevant is
discussed in the interview. Evaluation may also involve interviews by peers
with undergraduate students, graduate students, and/or colleagues. Interviews
with graduate students should address the question of the effectiveness
of the instructor in graduate thesis supervision. Each department should
develop a format for student interviews which is similar in spirit to the
faculty's student questionnaire.
The result of the interviews with
the instructor, students and colleagues and input, if any, from external
reviewers, is a peer evaluation report which is used by the department
as input to salary, promotion and tenure decisions and recommendations.
This report should contain the names of students and colleagues interviewed,
although particular comments should not, in general, be attributed to individuals.
In the case of promotion and tenure, the peer evaluation report, together
with the results of student questionnaires, form the basis of the teaching
section of the departmental recommendation to the Faculty tenure and promotion
committee. Under the 1992 tenure and promotion policy, the instructor is
to be provided "...with an opportunity to comment on or make an explanation
about any evaluation of the candidate's teaching which is part of the departmental
submission".
The direct input of a candidate
into the promotion and tenure case is through the candidate's curriculum
vitae. Each curriculum vitae should contain a Teaching Section
describing teaching duties performed, courses developed, graduate students
supervised, innovations in teaching, research and/or publications on teaching
and learning, and professional development activities related to teaching.
Curriculum Development,
Professional Development and Educational Research
Curriculum development, enhancement
of teaching and supervisory skills, and educational research are all important
components of a faculty member's job. Each of these activities requires
time and resources which should be recognized and budgeted for by departments.
In general, time and effort spent on the development of new teaching methods,
courses and/or programmes should be consistent with a departmental strategy
for the evolution of its educational offerings. In this context, assignments
to develop new courses, labs etc. should be viewed in the same light as
other educational activities, such as lecturing. Ultimately, of course,
it is the responsibility of the department chair to assign teaching duties
to faculty. Depending on its resources and priorities, a department may
or may not wish to invest in new initiatives at any given time. However,
the operative principle is that, when such initiatives are undertaken,
the time spent on them should be recognized as part of the teaching contribution
of the faculty members involved.
In some cases, a faculty member
may wish to undertake educational research or professional educational
development of potential value to the University as part or all of the
project for a research leave. Such a proposal is eligible for consideration
under the Research Leave Policy, provided that the faculty member meets
all other criteria.
Assurance of Educational
Quality
The responsibility for ensuring
and continually improving the quality of educational programmes is shared
by departments, Faculty Deans and by the governing bodies of the University,
the Senate and the Board of Governors. The following two paragraphs address
methods for programme evaluation, (A) by departments and (B) by the Deans
and governing bodies.
In addition to monitoring the teaching
performance of individual faculty members by the means described in Sections
II and III above, each department or Faculty should have in place procedures
for programme evaluation whereby graduating students, both undergraduate
and graduate, are surveyed or interviewed regarding their overall experience
with and impressions of the effectiveness of the teaching programme. A
record should be kept of these students' plans and career aspirations and
of how they can be contacted in the future. These surveys or interviews
should be followed up by a second survey, 3 to 5 years after graduation,
of at least a sample of each graduating class. The results of these surveys
and interviews should be used by the departm ent or Faculty for programme
evaluation and improvement, and they should be made available, in summary
form, for use by internal university reviewers.
The primary mechanism by which
the quality of the educational programmes of departments is monitored is
through periodic internal reviews conducted under the auspices of the Board-Senate
Committee on Academic Planning. The following policies are intended to
supplement the procedures which are currently in place for such reviews.
The review process should be open
and transparent. All participants should be asked to provide comments during
the review and on the draft report before final recommendations are made.
All those affected by the outcome of the review should part icipate, including
faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students.
The review panel should study the
reports on teaching by individual faculty members which are the subject
of Sections II and III above. They should also refer to the results of
interviews of graduating students and alumni, described above, and t hey
should themselves interview some current students and alumni regarding
the effectiveness of the overall teaching programme of the department.
Based on the final report, the
reviewing body and the Dean should agree on a set of recommendations to
be implemented, and the agreed-upon set of recommendations should be made
public. The Dean is responsible for the implementation of these reco mmendations
and will report periodically on the progress of this implementation until
it is agreed that the implementation is complete.
Approved by
Senate November 10, 1993 and February
9, 1994