Evaluation procedures are covered in Section 7 of your contract, but additional evaluation procedures related to Distance Education evaluation are further covered in section 16.7 of Distance Education (online and hybrid classes), and with many faculty teaching a variety of DE courses, it’s important to understand this additional information related to your evaluation process.

The contract language for evaluation and classroom visitation for DE courses specifies that “Prior to the evaluation of a distance education course or online component of a hybrid course the instructor shall be given the opportunity to provide guidance to the administrator/designee and/or peer evaluator regarding course organization and content that is applicable at the time of review,” which is the scheduled, sequential, 7-day observation period through the Distance Education offices.

Take advantage of your appointment to provide guidance to your evaluators by organizing your guidance using the evaluation form for DE courses, available in the Appendix of your contract.

The criteria areas are as follows:

• Instructor Initiated Regular, Effective Contact:
  • Important areas to focus upon include specific areas of your course where you are initiating “Regular, Effective Contact” with your students. This can include regularly scheduled announcements (and space for students to comment and get response on those announcements), commentary within discussion boards from you, or commentary from you in other areas of your course such as: interactive assignments, directions on home pages, the chat feature in Canvas, grading comments, other distance education tools such as Pronto or Voice Thread etc.
• Frequency/Timeliness of Regular Effective Contact:
  • An “active, daily presence is maintained especially during the first weeks of the course” is an important evaluation criteria, so you’ll want to point out this criteria as you guide your evaluator(s) in your course, and especially point to community-building and introduction activities that occur in the early weeks of your course.
  • Additionally, the evaluation document notes “Expectations of availability and a turn-around response time” should be established and posted for students, so be sure to guide evaluators to places in your course where this is indicated.
• General Performance Indicators: Taking time to specify general performance indicators in your guidance with evaluator(s) is key to a positive evaluation experience:
  • You want to be sure to explain and show your use of current materials and theories for the course, as well as point to how you’re integrating ADA and 508 compliance in your courses and/or offering alternatives.
  • Including a “Grading” line as part of the directions for online assignments is also important. You can show your evaluator(s) that the students understand how they’ll be graded, by what measures, and the relationship of the activity to the learning outcomes and learning goals.

Remember that you are empowered to submit and addendum to your evaluation within ten (10) working days after the committee chair has reviewed a copy of the report with you; additionally, your self-evaluation offers an opportunity for you to highlight evaluation criteria. The Self-Evaluation Worksheet Adjunct Faculty document includes space for you to speak about learning outcomes, as well as “reflect and comment on your strengths as an instructor” where you can describe, detail, and even attach appendices to show your excellence in DE Teaching and instruction. The Self-Evaluation Worksheet Full Time Faculty document offers opportunity in questions one and two to speak about your teaching and to describe specifically some of your DE strengths.

If your evaluation includes any unsatisfactory marks, it’s important for you to reach out to an FA Board Member to go over your document and review if there are any grounds for grievances, especially if you are untenured or are not on the Part Time Faculty Priority Rehire list.