Frequently Asked Questions for Administrators About Student Feedback Use in the Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness
• Are the reports from the Student Feedback Reviewers meant to be evaluative or just factual summaries of the student feedback?
◦ The Student Feedback Reviewers will submit an evaluation of the candidate’s teaching effectiveness, based on an analysis of students’ assessments regarding the candidate’s performance. These reviewers are responsible for synthesizing and interpreting both quantitative and qualitative feedback from SEEQ/SRTE responses across all courses taught during the review period.
◦ The report should not summarize the student feedback.
• How long should the Student Feedback Reviewers’ report be?
◦ Reports should be about 750 words in length.
◦ Reviewers should incorporate attention to the Elements of Effective Teaching into the report: effective course design, effective instruction, inclusive and ethical pedagogy, reflective and evolving practice as appropriate.
• Do candidates have the opportunity to respond to the Student Feedback Reviewers’ interpretation?
◦ Yes, if a candidate perceives that the report inadequately represents teaching effectiveness based on student feedback, candidates may revise their narratives to address the perceived discrepancy.
• Where will the report (from the Student Feedback Reviewers) go in the dossier? Will the dossier divider need to be updated?
◦ The report will go in the faculty input/peer review section of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning section of the dossier. The dossier divider has been updated.
• Are previous summary reports included in the dossier?
◦ These should be included consistent with past practice.
• What documents are included in the appendix?
◦ Moving forward, the appendix will include all the SRTEs AND SEEQs quantitative ratings in the probationary period, if under review for tenure, or the period of time since the last review, if under review for professor or NTL review. Only quantitative student feedback results (i.e., SEEQ/SRTE scores) will be included in an appendix to the dossier. The delivery mode of the course and the distribution, mode, and median for SEEQ/SRTE items will be provided for each course. Qualitative feedback is not to be included in the appendix.
◦ All candidates have the option of including student data and feedback from the SEEQ/SRTE reports in in their supplemental materials.
• What qualifications should the faculty reviewers have? For example, do the reviewers need to be at a higher rank than the candidate being evaluated? In other words, can an Associate Professor serve as a student feedback reviewer for another Associate Professor being considered for full? Must the faculty member nominated by the candidate be tenured? Can tenure-line faculty members review the student feedback for non-tenure line faculty (and vice versa)?
◦ At least one of the reviewers must be chosen from a list of two or more Penn State faculty members nominated by the candidate and at least one reviewer must be a member of the promotion and tenure committee at the first level of review. Units may determine the criteria for student feedback reviewers nominated by the candidate (e.g., rank or contract type). However, units cannot require candidates to exclusively nominate faculty members from their promotion and tenure committee at the first rank, although candidates are free to do so if desired.
• Do the faculty reviewers develop one report pertaining to student feedback or two?
◦ One report that all reviewers must sign. Disagreements should be noted in the report.
• Is there guidance with recommended language to be used to charge the student feedback reviewers?
◦ Yes, and it can be found here: Recommended Charge to Student Feedback Reviewers.
• If the Student Feedback Reviewers are faced with a large quantity of qualitative SEEQ/SRTE student feedback comments, can they use artificial intelligence (AI) to summarize the data to manage the workload?
◦ Reviewers may optionally use AI for this purpose. However, AI may only be used to summarize the qualitative data and must not be used to generate evaluative statements about the candidate’s teaching effectiveness. Reviewers must follow the Guidelines for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Summarizing Student Feedback for Faculty Assessment.