There is a new dashboard available to view your Student Course Survey (SCS) results through UAccess Analytics. This dashboard will be accessible starting Thursday, December 15, 2022. The Fall 2022 data will be loaded into the system and available on Monday, December 19, 2022. A communication about the dashboard was sent to all faculty, deans, and department heads.
See here for directions to access the SCS dashboard through UAccess.
We believe this new report will help instructors, review committees, and department heads assess quickly where to focus their efforts for teaching improvement. The SCS dashboard content will also be available through the Annual Profile by the end of January 2023.
UCATT will be holding biweekly Zoom office hours in January to help instructors and review committee members learn how to access and interpret the new reports. (See the section below titled Tutorials, Tools, and Information about UCATT Help Sessions for additional details and the registration links.)
We are grateful to the talented data scientists and other collaborators in UAIR for creating these reports and to the UCATT and Faculty Affairs professionals and instructors who have provided important feedback during the process. A special thank you to the following people:
| Mitchell Owen - UAIR | Dr. Andrea Romero - Faculty Affairs |
| Abraham Silva - UAIR | Dr. Lisa Elfring - UCATT |
| Nicolas Martin - UAIR | Becky Pérez - UCATT |
Tutorials, Tools, and Information about the SCS Dashboard Help Sessions
Below are links to resources to help you get the most out of the new dashboard:
- A document with directions to access the SCS dashboard through UAccess
- A YouTube instructional video that details the SCS dashboard and the data sections (3 minutes and 15 seconds)
- Helpful rubric for linking categories with teaching practices and examples of strategies for improvement.
- Zoom Office Hours - The University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology (UCATT) will be holding Zoom office hours to help instructors and review committee members learn how to access and interpret the new reports. The office hours will be Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 9:00 am and Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 9:00 am. To register to attend, please use the following links:
Background on SCS Questions
In 2018-2019, the Office of Instruction and Assessment worked with a faculty committee to develop a set of new “core” student-evaluation questions that:
- Provide feedback that helps instructors to focus their efforts to improve their teaching;
- Focuses on best practices in teaching across the wide range of disciplines represented at the University;
- Focuses more directly on the student experience than students’ opinions about instructors.
The faculty committee drew on research and items developed by other research institutions, including Vanderbilt University and the University of Oregon, which had recently gone through a similar process to revise their end-of-course surveys. The new items are better aligned with the recommendations of professional societies such as the American Sociological Association.
The new UArizona SCS were first administered in Fall 2019, but the pandemic interrupted the collection of data for two semesters. When widespread administration of SCS re-started, University Analytics and Institutional Research (UAIR), Faculty Affairs, and the SCS team in the University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology (UCATT) began a project to develop reports that would help instructors and departments see and interpret the data from the SCS. The Instructor Annual Review Summary, is now available in UAccess Analytics.
Four SCS Categories
The 12 core SCS items are organized into four categories: Assessment, Instruction, Learning, and Student-Instructor Interactions. The feedback in each category is presented as bar graphs showing the percent of positive (strongly agree and agree) and negative (strongly disagree and disagree) responses. Scores in each category are also reported for each offering of the course taught since SCS administration began to show trends over time. See here for a helpful rubric for linking categories with teaching practices and examples of strategies for improvement.
Questions?
For general questions about SCS or the new dashboard, please contact Becky Pérez rperez@arizona.edu.