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Course Evaluation Forms

The Teaching Staff & Tenure Committee and an Ad Hoc Committee on Evaluations are currently reviewing the forms and practices for student evaluations at The College of Wooster. Read more below …

Online Course Evaluation Forms:

Paper Course Evaluation Forms:

  • Form A (.pdf) (also known as the “Blue Form”)
  • Form B (.pdf) (aka the “Yellow Form”)
  • Form C (.pdf) (aka the “Green Form”)
  • Form D (.pdf) (aka the “Pink Form”)

If you have questions about the range of forms available, please contact Christa Craven, DFD, ccraven@wooster.edu.

Other Evaluation Forms:

Core Questions (on all CoursEval surveys):

Since faculty have a variety of options for course evaluation format and questions, all evaluations–whether online or paper–must include the following six questions for consistency (CoursEval forms do so automatically):

  1. What do you consider to be the strengths of this professor?
  2. What do you consider to be the weaknesses of this professor? Do you have suggestions that would help the instructor address these issues?
  3. I would rate the instructor’s overall performance in this course as: (5) Excellent (4) Very Good (3) Good (2) Fair (1) Poor
  4. An effective classroom depends on students being respected as individuals in a manner free of bias or discrimination. In this case, do you feel that students were treated with respect and without bias?
  5. I would rate this course overall as: (5) Excellent (4) Very Good (3) Good (2) Fair (1) Poor
  6. Explain your rating of the course.

Review of Current Forms

Description from Provost Lisa Perfetti’s “Charge to Ad Hoc Committee on Evaluations at the College of Wooster,” October 29, 2019

The norm at most colleges is a single standard evaluation form used by all faculty.  At The College of Wooster, multiple student evaluation forms have been created over time and are submitted to the TS&T committee as part of the review process. While the intent of having multiple forms was likely to provide choice and autonomy to faculty, the TS&T committee believes that this actually adds to the workload and anxiety of faculty who are unsure of which form is best to use.  Moreover, this wide range of forms submitted to TS&T makes it nearly impossible for the committee to consider evaluations equitably across cases even with the use of the “basic six questions.”

Furthermore, research indicates that we must do the very best to reduce bias in student rating forms. While some articles in the popular press have advocated eliminating student evaluations altogether, most experts on teaching and learning advise using scientifically designed student ratings as one part of a holistic process of assessing a faculty member’s teaching.

With the aim of making course evaluations more consistent and equitable, the ad hoc committee will review “best practices” for designing questions to reduce biased comments by focusing on specific practices in the classroom, particularly practices that are associated with promoting student learning, prompting students to provide contextual narrative information about their numerical ratings, aligning questions with the criteria in the Faculty Handbook for teaching excellence and other core values (which might not yet be represented in the Handbook, such as diversity, equity & inclusion), and asking students about reasons for taking the course, their level of contribution to the class, their expected grade, and other items that influence ratings.

The results of this review will be brought to the Faculty Meeting for discussion.

This website is maintained by the Dean for Faculty Development at the College of Wooster. Contact me if you have questions or suggestions. Dr. Christa Craven: ccraven@wooster.edu