Evaluation & Assessment

2022-2023 Highlights  

Explorance Grants: For the past two years, members of the E&A team have been awarded research grants from Explorance, the vendor for the online course evaluation system software. The first study, that concluded in September 2022, examined faculty perspectives (648 survey responses + 14 semi-structured interviews) on course evaluations and their interpretation of reports. This report’s findings support the team’s continued efforts to improve how course evaluation reports are shared and reviewed. The 2023 project focused on student perspectives on course evaluations.  

CEAG revival: After 2-year hiatus, our team led the revival of the Course Evaluation Advisory Group (description). As a part of this revitalization, the E&A team wrote an updated Terms of Reference, created a SharePoint workspace to store historical documents, and led the presentation at the March 2023 meeting attended by academic leaders across 12 Divisions and the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education.  

Middleware Project: This project to develop a specialized course evaluations middleware database application will greatly improve the intake and processing of course evaluation data. The project has completed an initial testing phase and is entering the user interface stage. The goal is to have a first version, complete with a new dashboard, ready to pilot in early 2024.   

Faculty Development Programming and Resources: Team members participated in the redesign and relaunch of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Faculty Mentoring for Teaching cohort program and co-led the ACUE program and supported the 2023 ACUE Certified-Faculty Lunch and Learn Series. Team members also worked with CTSI’s Associate Director to redesign and co-facilitate the Demystifying the Dossier workshop series, adding an emphasis on how to interpret and work with course evaluation data. The SoTL Hub on Quercus, a repository for resources and information links for those at U of T interested in SoTL, now has over 400 members. Team members led 4 two-hour SoTL webinars and 7 one-hour SoTL journal club meetings. They are also preparing to launch another SoTL Writing Cohort (after the successful pilot in 2021-22) in October 2023.