By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

A pilot project in which students turn in their No. 2 pencils and instead fill out course-evaluation forms online will be conducted this spring, with an eye toward campus-wide implementation in the fall 2002 semester, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee learned at its Sept. 26 meeting.

The computer program to be used would be similar to one developed by John Eisner, associate dean for information resources in the School of Dental Medicine, for courses in the dental school.

Peter Gold, associate dean for general education in the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Faculty Senate Teaching and Learning Committee, told FSEC members that the Eisner program, called CourseEval, was developed for use within a small school. It would have to be modified and expanded for use campus-wide, he said, since there is a potential for 114,000 evaluations every semester.

Ronald Gentile, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Graduate School of Education and chair of the Teaching and Learning Committee, said that course evaluations have been an issue that his committee has grappled with for some time, noting the "uneven responses" received from students and the "unclear norms" of the paper evaluations now used across a wide variety of disciplines.

Committee members had been skeptical about an online evaluation program, but after viewing a demonstration of Eisner's program last spring, he said, the committee has enthusiastically recommended that the system be administered campus-wide under the aegis of the new Office of teaching and Learning Resources.

"We are at a point where it seems to us a very good thing to do for the campus," Gentile said. "It will not be easy, it will take some practice and it will take some implementation trials. We're ready to see this move and I think the Provost's Office is ready to support it."

Gold told FSEC members that under the new system, students would see the same evaluation forms they now see on paper, only online, with the addition of several questions common to all evaluations. Students would receive an email notifying them that the evaluations for all their courses were ready to be filled out online. Once students respond—and all responses would be anonymous once they are filed, Gold stressed—they would receive no more email reminders.

The new system would make it easier for faculty members, as well as broader groups, to download information from the evaluations, he said.

Gold said the program "should save more money than it costs," and should save time that could be better spent improving students' response rate, "which is pretty poor now," he said, noting that in order to fill out a course evaluation, undergraduates must attend the class in which the evaluations are distributed.

Senate Chair Michael Cohen said he would ask Eisner to present his program at an upcoming meeting of the full Faculty Senate.

In other business, Joseph Mollendorf, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and outgoing chair of the senate's Research and Creative Activity Committee, presented the results of a recent survey of faculty members on research issues.

The idea behind the survey, Mollendorf said, was "to try to find out what's on the minds of the faculty with regard to research and creative activity."

He noted that the committee hired Buffalo Survey and Research Inc. to review the survey for bias and counter a criticism leveled by some administrators, including Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi.

Capaldi thanked Mollendorf for his willingness to modify the survey, noting that surveys are very difficult to prepare in order to gather useful, objective information.

She said the survey would provide "very useful base rate data, since it's the first year for both me and Jay (Turkkan, vice president for research) and we want to work on all of the issues of concern to the faculty."

"It gives us a good way to know what's on people's minds," Capaldi said. "I think it would be good to use this as a way to measure where we are after awhile—did we make progress?"

James Bono, associate professor of history, said he was concerned that a key question—what is research—isn't asked at the beginning of the survey.

"In a university as large and diverse as this, there are many different conceptions of what research is, what constitutes research, so that when we begin to frame questions about research, we are very careful that we are going to pull in answers from people that identify with the kinds of questions that we ask," Bono said.

Cohen instructed the committee, now chaired by John Ho, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics, to summarize the results of the survey, identify the top issues and develop recommendations for the senate.