Spring Break
Assistant dean sees hope for electronic SET results
Tyler Will
Issue date: 2/5/09 Section: News
02/05/09 - If students want to find the best- and worst-rated professors at the University of Rhode Island, it can be a difficult feat. But Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Bullock said students could have access to Student Evaluations of Teaching electronically in the future.
Bullock said the SET, available on microfirm in the Special Collections department in the University Library, is currently available electronically to college deans.
Bullock said he believes the SET results will be available electronically for students in the future, but the SET planning committee isn't meeting regularly anymore.
Currently, the results of the SET are publicly available on small blue sheets of plastic-like material about the size of an index card. The film is put into a projecting device, and text is blown up to a legible size, and the results are displayed alphabetically on several cards by professor or course.
For each class a professor teaches, criteria such as effective use of class time are displayed in rows, and letters A through D are displayed in columns to indicate varying degrees of satisfaction. The responses are reported in decimals indicating percentages beneath each letter.
There is one entry per course taught. Library records are up-to-date through the spring semester of 2008.
The nature of the information display makes finding the best- or worst-rated professors nearly impossible without searching through every single professor's name.
"That's just how they distribute the data," Bullock said, adding that a comparative list would be "gigantic."
That list would also be more complicated by the different faculty positions, such as per course instructors, adjunct or full-time faculty. While the deans of the colleges get SET by e-mail, Bullock said they only receive results from professors in their respective colleges. The SET results then flow from colleges to departments to individual professors, Bullock said.
Bullock said the SET, available on microfirm in the Special Collections department in the University Library, is currently available electronically to college deans.
Bullock said he believes the SET results will be available electronically for students in the future, but the SET planning committee isn't meeting regularly anymore.
Currently, the results of the SET are publicly available on small blue sheets of plastic-like material about the size of an index card. The film is put into a projecting device, and text is blown up to a legible size, and the results are displayed alphabetically on several cards by professor or course.
For each class a professor teaches, criteria such as effective use of class time are displayed in rows, and letters A through D are displayed in columns to indicate varying degrees of satisfaction. The responses are reported in decimals indicating percentages beneath each letter.
There is one entry per course taught. Library records are up-to-date through the spring semester of 2008.
The nature of the information display makes finding the best- or worst-rated professors nearly impossible without searching through every single professor's name.
"That's just how they distribute the data," Bullock said, adding that a comparative list would be "gigantic."
That list would also be more complicated by the different faculty positions, such as per course instructors, adjunct or full-time faculty. While the deans of the colleges get SET by e-mail, Bullock said they only receive results from professors in their respective colleges. The SET results then flow from colleges to departments to individual professors, Bullock said.
