Dear Denver Campus Faculty,
As many of you know, changes are coming to mode of administration and the content of the Faculty Course Questionnaire (FCQ), the evaluation instrument that our students complete at the conclusion of every course. We are writing today mainly to discuss the first change, which is a fully-online administration of the instrument, beginning this fall. We will also briefly describe the current activities related to revisions to the content of the FCQ.
At the end of the Spring 2016 semester, an intercampus committee – comprised of representatives from the Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs campuses — was formed to revise our FCQ process and instrument. The FCQ Redesign Project team was tasked with two intertwined efforts:
- to seek, vet and implement a new technology to move FCQs fully online
- to redesign the FCQ instrument by leveraging contemporary research and best practices
To this end, during the 2016/2017 academic year, this committee piloted a new technology platform and three different FCQ tools. Several communications were sent to all Denver campus faculty during the 2016/17 academic year and both faculty and students were given opportunities to offer feedback and participate in the pilot. More information about the FCQ Redesign Project can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/fcqredesign/.
On the FCQ Redesign Project website, you can also find more details about the newly selected vendor, Campus Labs (who will distribute the new FCQ to students online), additional research behind FCQ effectiveness, methodology behind the new question sets, and plans for testing and improvement.
The FCQ Office on the Boulder campus has decided that FCQs will be administered fully online, beginning this semester. During the pilot, if faculty made time during class for students to complete the FCQ using their computers or phone, the average response rate was 88%. If they did not make time, the response rate dipped below 20%. Further, some instructors who participated in the pilot experimented with offering micro-incentives (worth < or = 1 % of course grade) in online courses in order to improve response rates—courses using micro-incentives had response rates over 75%. For more information on using micro-incentives please see: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0098628316662754
In addition, the FCQ Office on the Boulder campus, responsible for administering the FCQs to the three campuses, has developed a seven-minute online training for faculty that addresses concerns with moving online. This training focuses on: a) FCQ program efforts to promote FCQ participation; b) proven practices that can be adopted by instructors in their classrooms to help improve response rates; and c) information about the new Campus Labs platform for FCQ administration.
View recorded training online at: https://www.colorado.edu/fcq/encouraging-higher-online-response-rates
The FCQ that will be administered online this fall is the same instrument that has been used on our campus for many years. A draft of a revised FCQ instrument that emerged from the pilot work conducted last year is currently being reviewed by faculty and administrators. Our Faculty Assembly has voted in favor of adopting this revised FCQ instrument, and is advocating that we adopt it for spring 2018 administration. This fall we will work with deans, chairs, and other unit heads to make sure everyone understands the proposed changes. Once the university has committed to adopting revised FCQs, the CU Denver Faculty Assembly will form a steering committee to explore implementation options. Of course, how to implement the new FCQ is ultimately a matter for primary units, per Regent Laws. A copy of the proposed revised instrument is attached.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter. We will be in further communication as campus responses to the draft new instrument develop.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Laura Goodwin, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Laura.Goodwin@ucdenver.edu) or Peter Anthamatten, Chair of the CU Denver Faculty Assembly (Peter.Anthamatten@ucdenver.edu).
Sincerely,
Rod Nairn, PhD
Provost
Laura Goodwin, PhD
Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Peter Anthamatten, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Chair, CU Denver Faculty Assembly
Joanne Addison, PhD
Professor, Department of English
Joan Bihun, PhD
Associate Professor, Clinical Teaching Track, Department of Psychology