Office of University Evaluation

The Office of University Evaluation consults with academic units as they develop strategies to measure student learning at the program level. Strategies include program objectives, the means for measuring student learning of these objectives, and follow-up activities to review and act on the resulting data. The OUE website http://www.asu.edu/oue/assessment.html contains information about ASU Academic Program Assessment Strategies and Reports and Assessment Tools and Resources.

This office began hosting and administering end of the semester course evaluations for on-line distance education courses in the fall of 2002. For participating departments course evaluations are sent to students enrolled in over 100 on-line courses. Each student is sent an email note with a URL, a list showing which on-line classes they are enrolled in, and a unique password for each class. They may complete only one evaluation per course.

The same evaluation is used for all distance education classes and contains both closed- and open-ended items. For the first 14 items, numeric results compare the course section to responses from courses of the same department/prefix and also to responses from a course of similar level. Open-ended responses are provided by course section only. Results are sent to instructors and department chairs after grades are posted. Summative responses to the last 7 items are provided to Distance Learning and Technology for feedback to online course operations. The on-line version of the evaluation and a sample of results can be viewed at: http://www.asu.edu/oue/websurveys.htm.

As part of the Office of Evaluation, University Testing Services provides automated data collection services for the processing of paper-based instructor evaluations using optical mark reader technology. This service unit consults and works with the academic colleges and programs needing assistance in developing evaluation templates for departmental use.

The analysis report generated by UTS for each class section lists the following items in a frequency tabulation format:

1. The number of students who responded to each question.
2. The number of students who responded to each response.
3. The percentage of students who responded to each response.
4. The number of responses missing.
5. The mean.
6. The standard deviation.
7. The median.

Complete instructions for submitting evaluation forms are found at the University Testing Services web address: http://www.asu.edu/uts/s_instructor.htm.