The legacy course evaluation system at UF, GatorRater, features questions that date back to the 1990s and contains questions that are poorly worded or vague. The Provost’s Office established a Task Force to work with Deans, Welfare Council of the Faculty Senate, Academic Policy Council of the Faculty Senate, Student Advisory Council for Undergraduate Affairs, as well as student focus groups to operationalize questions to focus on actions and outcomes.
A Policy subcommittee of the Task Force held meetings with various faculty specialists on campus, including psychometricians and pedagogical theorists, to solicit their feedback on the update to the question set. The subcommittee held both undergraduate and graduate student focus groups. The feedback and focus groups findings were used to update the legacy system question set, which was sent to the Taskforce and Faculty Senate for final recommendations.
The Policy Subcommittee recommended the GatorEvals questionnaire have three distinct categories:
Included in these Categories will be Free Response Questions and Supplemental Questions for Online, Clinical, and Lab sections.
As applicable, the GatorEvals questions are aligned with the legacy system questions. The Policy Subcommittee views the GatorEvals question set as an overview of teaching effectiveness and an indication of the value of a course. The Subcommittee recommends using a composite score (weighting each question) rather than using a single question as a sole measure of a teacher’s “effectiveness”.