SETs give way to new online Student Ratings of Instruction

04/08/09 - On April 17, students at the University of Rhode Island will receive e-mails asking them to participate in the university's new Student Ratings of Instruction (SRI), replacing the outdated Student Evaluation on Teaching (SET). At the end of each semester, students evaluate their professors based on a series of questions on a Scantron. The SETs were programmed and developed at URI 35 years ago.

It is a contractual obligation between the American Association for University Professors and the university that professors must undergo an evaluation.

Since its creation, the results for the SETs would be stored on microfilm in the University Library on the Kingston campus. The results were never compiled because of the time and cost it would take.

"The old SETs never helped any of us students, I would rather just look on ratemyprofessor.com," sophomore Ross Crory said.

The results of a professor's scores were rarely used besides being used during a professor's time of promotion or tenure, according to professor and Department Chair of Computer Science and Statistics James Kowalski.

Ten years ago, the Faculty Senate Executive Council did a self-study for reaccreditation. It concluded that the SET system needed to be retired and a new system needed to be put in its place.

The IDEA Center, which originated at Kansas State University during the 1960s, created the new SRI system. The evaluation program is used nationwide by many accredited universities, including University of Washington and New Mexico University.

The center is now an independent and nonprofit organization. It offers the IDEA-SRI, a student evaluation program to thousands of universities.

"We decided a couple years ago that this was a good avenue to go," Kowalski said.

Last spring, 90 faculty members from 150 different class sections participated in a trial study of the SRI evaluation system.

"Essentially everyone on the faculty who participated thought that this was a better system," Kowlaski added.

The new surveys will be completed online in an attempt to modernize the system and keep with URI's "going green" philosophy.

Another issue that encumbered the old system was the inaccuracy of the results. There was no way of telling if a student lied on the evaluations.

To try and counteract the problem, the SRIs are personalized to the professor and course taught. Professors will be able to pick the type of questions on the evaluation to coincide with the criteria of the course. Professors will choose three to five out of 12 goals listed on the faculty information forms. The goals of the class that are chosen will be ranked as "essential, important and/or minor" to the course.

"I think they are fabulous, much better then the old ones," Director of the Women's Studies Program Jody Lisberger said. "The new one allows professors to tailor the evaluations to the goal of the course."

After the evaluations have been taken, they are sent to the IDEA Center where they are compiled. Professors can be compared at the university and national level. Department chairs and accreditation committees can use the data to evaluate a professor's marks over time.

The professors get to see where they stand among their colleagues and their overall teacher ratings on a five-point scale. They will be able to see which goals their students believed they did not accomplish. The SETs did not provide faculty with this information.

"It will be good for professors to see their class from their students' perspective," Kowalski said.

Students' submissions will be kept completely anonymous. Only professors and administrators will know the number of students who took the evaluation in each course.

The extent of information to be made available to students is still under discussion. It is a contractual issue with the AAUP and the university that will decide what information students can see.