Provost's Advisory Committee on

At its June,1996 meeting, Senate approved a new Instructor and Course Evaluation form (see Exhibit 1) for university-wide use beginning in the 1996-97 academic year. The distinctive features of the new teaching evaluation form include numerical ratings of a broad range of teacher and course characteristics, written comments from students on instructor and course, assessment of student characteristics such as class attendance and expected grade, and use of a 7-point poor-outstanding rating scale rather than the traditional 5-point agree-disagree scale. The teacher and course characteristics included on the new teaching evaluation form were selected according to the following criteria: (1) observable by students, (2) under the control of the instructor, (3) applicable to all or nearly all forms of teaching, and (4) positively related to student learning.