Dear Denver Campus Faculty,<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At the end of the Spring 2016 semester, an intercampus committee \u2013 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:<\/p>\n
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\u00a0http:\/\/www.colorado.edu\/fcqredesign\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2014courses using micro-incentives had response rates over 75%. For more information on using micro-incentives please see:\u00a0http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/0098628316662754<\/a><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n