Interpreting IDEA Evaluations
Overall Progress on Relevant Objectives
The Overall Progress on Relevant Objectives is the single most important score for summative evaluation purposes. Always look at the adjusted score since this score compensates for class size and student motivation to take the course. This score (national mean = 50) represents student's perceptions of progress on the weighted average of objectives that the instructor has identified as essential (weighted double) and important on the faculty information form for that course. It is the single best measure of teaching effectiveness. It is also the only measure that we provide local comparison norms for at TTU.
Please keep in mind that it is not appropriate to use these scores to make fine discriminations. They are most useful for identifying the extremes in teaching effectiveness. Furthermore, because of the variations in students performing the evaluations, it is best to look at averages or trends in evaluation performance across classes and across time.
Since the IDEA form allows instructors to select the learning objectives that are most appropriate for each course, it is important for instructors to carefully consider their selection of course objectives. Instructors who select inappropriate objectives may unintentionally lower their evaluation score. The choice of appropriate objectives may be guided by the following criteria:
- Is the objective a significant part of the course?
- Does the course help students accomplish this objective?
- Does the student's progress on this objective affect his/her grade?
You may also want to review the IDEA Center Advice on selecting objectives.
Discipline Averages
Evaluation ratings can differ across disciplines. The exact reasons for these variations are difficult to pin down. Keep in mind that each course evaluation score always reflects a comparison to a national database composed of many different disciplines. To better understand how a specific discipline or department compares to national averages, look at the local norms for TTU (broken down by discipline and course level) or look at the IDEA Center analysis of discipline scores.