Dear Colleagues,
First, thank you for your patience as the university transitions to new course evaluation software (Class Climate). I write with an important reminder and update from the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. (For context and a useful FAQ, see OIE’s website: https://oie.wwu.edu/evaluations/.)
OIE will email a .pdf copy of course evaluations to instructors teaching face-to-face classes on Monday, November 21st and a link to students enrolled in online/hybrid classes on Monday, November 28th.
You may recall that for Fall quarter only, faculty will be unable to choose their evaluation forms, because OIE needs more time to build that option into the process. OIE has been manually assigning the different lettered evaluation forms to all Fall 2022 CRNs according to how the course is currently coded on Banner. For example, all of the courses currently coded as “Lecture” on Banner – something we cannot see on Classfinder – are being assigned Form A, and so on. (These course type codes were entered into Banner when the course was initially created and can be updated during schedule submission.) Last week, I learned that a substantial number of the course types are inaccurate and no longer reflect the way the course is currently being taught. Course type codes have never been linked to course evaluations before, making this a non-issue until now. Due to the scale of this problem, there is not enough time for OIE to accommodate requests to change the course type (known as “schedule type”) in Banner. If it helps, the differences across all forms (A-E) are minimal and all lettered forms contain the three questions (18, 19, 20 on the old forms) many departments use for the purposes of faculty review. The three write-in questions are included with all lettered forms as well.
We’ve set up a temporary email to field all questions between now and the end of Fall quarter: courseevaluations@wwu2.onmicrosoft.com. This will allow us to problem-solve collaboratively and ensure that all questions and concerns are responded to as quickly and productively as possible.
I want to assure you that OIE and I are working hard to address issues as they arise. There are many moving parts and I continue to be impressed by how quickly and thoughtfully the staff at OIE respond to faculty questions and concerns. I am doing all that I can to support them in their efforts.
Thank you,
Lysa Rivera
President, Faculty Senate