Enter your weightings for the current academic year. If you have more than one department, you must enter weightings for each one of them individually before you start creating forms. (And, not to be too repetitive about it, please triple-check your weightings before you hit submit. Once you start entering forms, it may not be possible to change the weightings for that academic year...)
If you have someone who will act as an Evaluation Assistant (i.e., they can assign reviewers, double-check adjunct/full-time status, and assign the year of the evaluation cycle and help you monitor the status of evaluations), you can go ahead and assign them now (or later). You can assign multiple assistants if you wish.
If you have several departments listed for you in the system, they will be combined together into a single list. Each faculty member will receive a single Summary form from you. (If they teach in another totally different department, they will receive another form from that department.)
If you have someone teaching in more than one of your departments, their name may show up more than once in your list. If so, just create the form from either link and you will see that both departments are listed on the actual form (and both links should lead to the same form).
If you do not plan to have another reviewer besides yourself, please don't list yourself as the reviewer - just leave Reviewer blank (all forms always get reviewed by you before they are sent out, so you can't assign yourself to also be the Reviewer). The form's status changes to "In review"
Once you assign a Reviewer, the form gets sent to them. When they are finished, they send it on to you. The form's status changes to "Department Chair review"
If you do assign a Reviewer, after they send the form on to you, you may make any changes you feel are appropriate.
If you significantly alter the direction of the review, it would be good to remove the reviewer, so their name doesn't appear on the final form sent to faculty.
You can also assign the form to a different reviewer or clear the form and start over.
If you wish, you can send the form back to the reviewer with a message explaining what you would like them to do/check. (It will return to you when they finish with it again, with the status changing back and forth as it moves.)
Notice that your departmental weightings appear next to each criteria; these will appear in the final PDF version of the form so that if/when those weightings change, there is a record of what they were for this year (and for your department).
One of the big advantages of using this app rather than just a PDF file is that you can enter as much text as you want into each comment box. (There may be a limit to how much you can enter, but it's quite large...) Unfortunately, the text you enter won't. be styled (bold, italic, etc.) but just plain text, even if you copy/paste it in.
Feel free to type out comments in a Google doc or Word file and then copy/paste them into the app. Just be aware that any formatting will be lost, so don't rely too much on formatting to get your point across.
The comments will be expanded in full in the final PDF version of the form (and on the version shown to faculty for signature), without requiring any scrolling.
If you give someone a rating of Approaching ACC Exemplary Teaching and Faculty Expectations or Does Not Meet ACC Faculty Expectations on any criteria, be sure to put a clear list in the comments detailing what they need to improve specifically.
You will note that there are many places available for comments on the form, one for each criteria and one for the overall rating. Please remember that an important focus of the new faculty evaluation system is on giving faculty useful, formative feedback, including both recognition of the things each person is doing well as well as things that could use improvement. It isn't required that you enter comments in every section, but please do try to at least give comments and suggestions about the major criteria and the overall rating.
It is now possible to attach a PDF file to the form that will be attached to the final PDF version of the form that is archived. (There is a size limit, so please don't try to attach scanned documents or other large files - those will result in an error.)
There is a limit of one PDF per form attached. If you add a file to a form with an existing attachment, the new file will replace the old one.
If your Reviewer has already attached a file, please view it before you attach a file to ensure you are okay with replacing it, since your file will replace that one.
There are two ways you can enter course evaluation ratings:
Choose a single modality of "Mixed/Combined" - Do this when a faculty member's ratings are basically the same, regardless of which type of class they are teaching.
For each different modality/course type they teach, enter that type and the rating that corresponds to it - Use this when you want to break things apart by course type (not by individual course, but group all asynchronous courses together, for example, and list their average rating for those, then do the same for lab courses, etc.). While you can choose to do this for everyone, you might save this for when there is a notable difference in the ratings they are getting in one type of course vs. another.
Notice that this is optoinal for adjuncts, so no ratings are listed for them, just a box for comments. Since we do have many adjuncts who do service for the college or department beyond their teaching duties, please give some recognition of those here. (Professional service "counts" even if they received some compensation for it.)
Full-time faculty have a rating as well as comments for this.
This is not automated in the app (and probably won't be anytime soon). However, you can find instructions on how to compute it here and download a spreadsheet that makes it easier and quicker to compute here.
It is not expected that you include the score used to compute the rating in the Summary form (faculty can go to the above links to compute their "score" themselves if they wish), but do note that if someone's score falls into either Zone 1 or Zone 2 on the table, you will need to decide whether to "round up" or "round down" (see the above link) and you should include a reason for your choice in the Overall comments. (There is no need to do this if their score falls clearly in one of the rating's ranges.)
You will notice a shaded box towards the bottom of the form that says "Notes to Reviewer/Dean (not printed on form)". Anything you type into this shaded box will not be viewable by the faculty, but only the Reviewer (if you hit Send to reviewer) or when it gets to the Dean. If you send the form back to the reviewer, you much enter a message into the box to explain why.
You may also have a message towards the bottom of the form from your Reviewer as well (also not viewable by the faculty member). This allows for some limited messaging between evaluators.
There are several situations where the Department Chair might want/need to "jump the line" and edit a Summary form while it is still "in Review" by the Reviewer
Illness or indisposition of Reviewer
In some departments, there is a need to "pass" the form back and forth and the Department Chair might need to add in some additional information to what the Reviewer has.
Other special cases
There are two ways to handle this:
Initiated by Reviewer - The Reviewer can "Send to DC"; the Department Chair can "Send to Reviewer" to return to them. This is the preferred method, when possible.
Initiated by Department Chair - The Department Chair can just click on Edit and make any needed changes. However, if they Save the form, its status will change to "Deaprtment Chair Review". In order to send it back to the Reviewer to finish, click on "Send to Reviewer" instead; the Department Chair will need to enter a message to the Reviewer letting them know what was changed.
When you finish everything on the form, you should sign it and send it onwards
If the overall rating is ACC Exemplary Teaching and Faculty Expectations Have Been Met or Approaching ACC Exemplary Teaching and Faculty Expectations, the form will be sent on to the faculty member for acknowledgement and signature. The status will change to "Faculty review"
If the overall rating is Does Not Meet ACC Faculty Expectations, then the form will be sent to the Dean for review. (They can then send it on to the faculty or back to you with comments.) The status will change to "Dean confirmation"
In this case, a meeting with the faculty member is required to develop a Performance Improvement Plan (info here).
If it went to the Dean (see above), they can either send it on to faculty or send it back to you with comments (that aren't visible to the faculty or on the final form) for your reconsideration. If it gets returned to you, the status will change back to "Department Chair review"
When the form goes to the faculty member, they will acknowledge and sign it, possibly add comments to it (for the final PDF), and have the option to request a meeting with the Department Chair (required if their overall rating was Does Not Meet ACC Faculty Expectations).
If no conference was requested (or required), the form is sent to the Dean for final signature. The status will change to "Faculty accepted"
If a conference was requested/required, the form will be returned to you and you (or your admin) should reach out to schedule the conference. The status will change to "Faculty / Department Chair Conference"
If the conference was for an Overall rating of Does Not Meet ACC Faculty Expectations, you will need to develop a Performance Improvement Plan with the faculty member (see details here). You should upload a PDF of that plan into the form (there's a new place towards the bottom of the form for you to use for this). You also have the option to make changes in the original Summary form at this point.
If the conference was at the request of the faculty member, you should upload notes on the conference as a PDF into the form at the same place as above. Again, you may choose to make changes to the Summary form at this point if you wish.
After the conference, you will forward the form back to the faculty member for their acceptance/signature. The status returns to "Faculty review"
Upon faculty acceptance/signature, the form is sent to the Dean for final signature. The status will change to "Faculty accepted"
The faculty member does have the option to request a conference with the Dean at this point, in which case the status becomes "Faculty / Dean Conference"
Upon Dean's signature, the form is converted to a signed PDF and archived into the app and a copy is sent to the faculty member's personnel folder in Box automatically. The status changes to "Completed"
Completed forms become archived and can be viewed in the system (but not modified) later. The status changes to "Archived"
Currently, the system does not support teaching evaluations for the Department Chair and the Dean. We are hoping to have this available by the Fall semester.
This is a known bug. This is an error due to "inactivity" in the system; the system should be waiting for multiple hours of inactivity before timing out, but this doesn't seem to be happening.
Workaround:
First, copy all of the comments from the form into a Word or Google doc, just in case.
Leaving the window open with the form in it, open another window/tab and log into the Faculty Evaluation Summary system again.
Go back to the original form and you should be able to Save, Send to Reviewer, or Send to Faculty now. If not, open the form again and paste the comments back into it and then Save, etc.