In present practice at the UW, the primary device for review of faculty (exclusive of those in support of decisions relating to hiring, tenure and promotion, and competitive offers) are those that are used as a basis for distributing the merit salary increases appropriated by the state legislature. These merit reviews are conducted at irregular intervals (usually once or twice a biennium), timed to coincide with state appropriations for salary increases. The amount of funding available varies from one time to the next and in some years, like the present, the term "merit salary increase" is a euphemism. Supporting documentation for assessing "merit" includes annual activity reports, student teaching evaluations, and updated vitae and publication lists. The time line for generating these recommendations is often quite short so that the review process for the entire departmental faculty is compressed into a few weeks. Most of the annual meetings between faculty and their department chairs take place during these intervals.
The Committee suggests that these reviews be conducted in combination with annual meetings with the department chairs (Recommendation 3). In effect, these annual or biennial meetings would serve two complementary purposes: to review the faculty member's performance and accomplishments with respect to the responsibilities negotiated at the previous meeting, and to agree on goals and expectations upon which the next review would be based. Rather than being scheduled to meet tight deadlines for merit salary recommendations, these meetings could be arranged at the convenience of the faculty.
Recommendation 7: The periodic meetings with department chairs in Recommendation #3 also be used for assessing each faculty member's progress toward meeting the expectations and achieving the goals agreed to at the previous meeting with the chair. Ordinarily, the most recent of these reviews should serve as the basis for allocating salary increases at the departmental level at the times they are appropriated by the state legislature.
Recommendation 8: At the option of the faculty member, or in the event of two consecutive departmental recommendations for zero merit salary increases, the chair should appoint an ad hoc faculty committee to undertake a more detailed developmental review of the faculty member's performance. This review would have three possible outcomes: (1) a conclusion that the previous negative merit assessments did not adequately reflect the faculty member's performance; (2) proposed measures to improve faculty performance; or (3) proposed changes in the balance of the faculty member's responsibilities to bring them into better alignment with his/her abilities and the unit's needs.
Teaching effectiveness issues in (2) could be addressed through the University's Center for Instructional Development and Resources or through the use of peer coaching or mentoring set up within the department. Scholarship can sometimes be reinvigorated by a change in direction or by entering into collaborations with peers. In implementing (3), the wide variety of teaching and service needs throughout the university should be taken into consideration. If measures such as these are to be pursued effectively, the university will need to maintain an adequate level of institutional support for faculty development.
Student evaluations are widely acknowledged as being of value, but they sometimes fail to adequately distinguish between the enthusiasm and charisma of the instructor and his/her teaching ability. Courses on popular topics that require rather little work on the part of the student and are graded liberally tend to receive higher ratings than more challenging courses with higher expectations of student performance. Examination of course materials by peers works well and is becoming easier to implement as more and more instructors post their course materials on the worldwide web. Peer classroom visitations are valuable as a developmental tool, but they can be time-consuming and intrusive if used extensively in evaluation. Letters from students and samples of examinations, projects, term papers, etc., from representative students are sometimes used to interpret or complement the information on learning outcomes derived from the student ratings. A comprehensive evaluation instrument used in the selection process for the University's Distinguished Teaching Awards is the "teaching portfolio." The core of the portfolio is the instructor's own written reflections on the goals of the course, the teaching strategy used to achieve them, and the learning outcomes. Preparing these portions of a portfolio may require a substantial amount of effort on the part of the instructor, at least for the first time around, but the process of reflecting on one's goals and methods has intrinsic value.
There is widespread sentiment among the faculty that student ratings are overemphasized relative to other methods of assessing learning outcomes in evaluating the teaching of UW faculty.
Recommendation 9: Assessment of teaching effectiveness should be expanded to place greater emphasis on learning outcomes. As a step in this direction, departments should be encouraged to experiment with the use of teaching portfolios on a limited basis, with emphasis on documenting student learning in a single class and how the instruction fostered that learning.
The Faculty Council on Instructional Quality has written guidelines for teaching portfolios and has sponsored (together with the Office of Educational Assessment) mini-grants to a number of departments to incorporate this concept to their own evaluations.
Consideration also needs to be given to assessing what students learn over the course of their careers at the University. Performance in capstone courses at the senior level, in which students are required to apply what they have learned to "real world" problems might be one useful indicator.
Recommendation 10: Faculty responsibilities should be codified in a way that makes the existing variations more explicit and encourages greater flexibility in assessing the balance of teaching, research, and service. Each department and each college council should review its own criteria for promotion and tenure, with a view toward ensuring balance and flexibility, and avoiding unrealistic expectations of junior faculty. Greater emphasis should be placed on the quality and impact of a faculty member's teaching and/or research contributions and less on quantitative statistics derived from student evaluations, publication counts, and level of contract/grant funding. Interdisciplinary activities should be encouraged and special efforts taken to properly evaluate contributions that may span disciplines.
