Reminder on Teaching Evaluations as Part of Annual Reviews for Spring Term 2020

Aug 31, 2020

The deans and provost have agreed not to use spring 2020 course evaluations in isolation to make decisions that affect employment. Though the format and process for course and instructor evaluations have remained the same, faculty are encouraged to discuss their results in the context of the current crisis and to use them for professional growth. Spring 2020 course evals will only play a role in contract renewal, promotion, or tenure materials if faculty opt to include them. To include course evaluations, faculty can download their course evaluations from EvaluationKIT, and upload them onto the Workflow screen with the Annual Review questions in Activity Insight. If faculty are having trouble accessing their results or no longer have the EvaluationKIT email with the direct link, they can email Katie Schroeder at Kathryn.Schroeder@du.edu for assistance.

Course evaluations will continue to be administered in the fall, recognizing that faculty will lean in and shine during this time and we want to encourage, incentivize, and support proactive behavior. Those of you in positional authority, including department chairs, directors, and senior faculty, should communicate to colleagues preparing for tenure, promotion, and annual reviews your commitment to ensuring a fair review process following this academic upheaval.

Even in the best of times, we know these measures do not fully capture teaching excellence and can contain bias. This fall, the Teaching Excellence Task Force will be seated and begin looking at alternate measures of teaching effectiveness.

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