Teacher and Course Evaluation

The following procedures are developed in response to the Teaching Council’s recommendations offered to and adopted by the Faculty Senate on March 11, 2009. These procedures are meant to supplement Academic Policy 1405.15.

A standardized university-wide procedure for administration:

  1. All course evaluations are administered on-line for each class through CoursEval.
  2. An e-mail will be sent to all students enrolled in a class with 5 or more students, as well as the instructor for that class, announcing evaluations are open.
  3. Students will receive e-mails every other day for one week reminding them to complete the course evaluations.
  4. Evaluation period is generally 5 – 10 days long and access to course evaluations will then be closed.
  5. The evaluation process is completely anonymous.
  6. Results of evaluations will be sent to individual faculty members 72 hours after grades are posted in UAConnect.
  7. Faculty may not retaliate against students, based on feedback from course evaluations, or the faculty will face negative repercussions.
  8. It is the faculty member’s responsibility to login to CoursEval prior to evaluations being deployed to ensure accuracy of the information being provided to students.
  9. Faculty may choose 5 questions from the PICES Item Catalog in addition to the pre-determined University, College, and Department questions.
  10. Quantitative information on course evaluations is available to designated department heads, chairs and deans, however, beginning December 2019 student comments are available to department heads/chairs.
  11. Contact information for email courseval@uark.edu

(Campus Council, Adopted March 14, 1985)

The Campus Council in 1985 reaffirmed the value of teacher and course evaluation by students, but significantly modified its implementation by recognizing that student evaluation of teaching effectiveness serves two related but distinctly separate objectives. The first relates directly to the instructor’s own effort to teach effectively. The second pertains to administrative decisions regarding salary, promotion, and tenure. The revised academic policy 1405.11 (2019) requires that in addition to student course evaluations, faculty must provide other evidence of teaching effectiveness, e.g., letters of recommendation, mentoring and placement success, evidence of student learning, etc. See APS 1405.11.