Survey Monkey Re: Student On-Line Assessment of Faculty
Last week, February 17-20, your Union reps sent you a Survey Monkey to get feedback on the new on-line Student Surveys created by the College and used for the first time last semester.
We, your Union reps, have received a great deal of feedback expressing your concerns regarding the lack of reliability and validity of the College’s new on-line student survey. As a result, we in the Union created this second Survey Monkey and circulated it to you to gauge the extent to which you want us to continue to raise this issue with Management.
The results were very clear. Our Survey Monkey was aimed at only those professors who were already student-surveyed, last semester, and a total of 71 of you responded to us. This is a very high completion rate.
On the first question, “I feel that the new on-line student survey of faculty, implemented by management this fall, was an accurate and valid assessment of my teaching methods,” only 1.4 per cent of you agreed strongly, 16.9% agreed, 14.1% neither agreed or disagreed, 29.6% disagreed, and 38% strongly disagreed. On the question, “If you were evaluated in the fall, are you now being evaluated again?” 52.1% answered “Yes,” and 48.9% answered “No.”
For the third question, “I have concerns regarding management’s use of the data gathered from the surveys and would like the Union to take stronger action regarding the survey,” over 42.9% replied “Strongly Agree.” This is a striking response! 14.3% replied, agree, 31.4% neither agree or disagree, 7.1% disagree, and 4.3% strongly disagree.
The comments section was also remarkable: we received 41 written comments (many of which were very detailed and compelling), and all but one expressed skepticism and concern about the new on-line student survey as it is currently used.
As your Union representatives, we feel certain that this survey shows that you have a great deal of concern with the new on-line student-feedback survey. We are meeting with Management to ask for changes to the survey or ideally, a return to the paper surveys. We are also looking at other ways to protect you in this matter. We will ask management to re-consider their practice of placing these problematic student survey results in our HR files, and we will be very pro-active if any of these questionable student survey results are used in any way to discipline you or pressure you into retraining activities such as CAFÉ.