MINUTES OF THE MEETING PAGE

4

OF THE FACULTY SENATE FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Committee.” The goal is for Blue to ultimately be able to capture all evaluation data. Dr. Robichaud stated that there are various problems that people have noted with certain academic activities where it has been impossible to capture and yet they want them evaluated and so we are trying to figure out how that would be worked out and this gives the possibility and policy of that happening.

Dr. Sridhar stated that the University Faculty Affairs Committee is bringing forward two changes to the policy governing access to the SEI data as well as inclusions and exclusions for SEI data collection. He then asked if there were any questions.

Senator Norbert Delatte stated that this isn’t actually in the change category. He noted that he is looking at the last item 2) at the bottom of the second page where it says, “combined or cross listed courses” are supposed to be aggregated. He reported that that didn’t happen last semester. The impact is if you have a class that has a relatively small enrollment and it is split up between undergraduates and graduates and a student may be cross-enrolled in a capstone, you don’t get any data at all or there are so few being reported that you could actually kind of almost tease out whose individual response it is. So, unless those start being aggregated, that is not meaningful. He realizes that this is not part of the resolution but that item 2 says that this is supposed to be happening.

Dr. Robichaud asked Dr. Delatte if he could put that in an email and send it to Vice Provost LaGrange’s office and see if there can be some resolution through that office. She added that this sounds like it is a technical problem, not a policy problem.

Dr. Delatte stated that what is happening is that Blue is generated by what sections students are enrolled in, but we need to begin this process. Dr. Robichaud responded that UFAC recognizes that there are a lot of problems like that but until they are identified to Vice Provost LaGrange’s office, they can’t be solved. She added that it may be that Dr. Delatte’s classes will be one of these situations that falls under some kind of alternative way of gathering evaluation data at this point.

Senator Petru Fodor commented that on point 2) where it says, “A course enrolling fewer than 5 students will be excluded from reports” that actually students who are enrolled in courses that are less than five students are still prompted to report on the course even if that data is not shared with them. Dr. Robichaud stated that currently, all of the data that can be collected is being collected in Blue but for reasons that Dr. Delatte was just raising of anonymity – fewer than five are now being reported back. Professor Fodor said that is what we want but it shouldn’t be collected in the first place.” Dr. Robichaud noted that this is another problem probably with a system that would need to be worked out.

Dr. Delatte pulled up his report on his laptop to make sure. He noted that they actually are being reported even to the department chair if they are below five and he is looking at one section that had one respondent but he is still getting percentages to each question which are one hundred percent. So it looks like that is not happening either.