Beyond Evaluation: Using IDEA Ratings to Reflect on Teaching

In Fall 2019, the College changed to using the IDEA system for student ratings of instruction. As part of the evaluation process, the College uses the global summative score from the IDEA. Although these global scores may be broadly informative, they offer relatively little information to help us reflect on our teaching or guide future revisions of our courses. Fortunately, the IDEA forms offer a wealth of information beyond the global scores that, if used thoughtfully, can raise interesting questions and offer potential avenues to explore in our teaching.

As you prepare for your spring courses, MCTL will sponsor a 90-minute workshop led by Mark Sciutto on how to use IDEA ratings to promote reflection and make pedagogical decisions in your courses. In the interest of maximizing scheduling flexibility and public health precautions, this workshop will be entirely virtual.

What You Will Need:

• Choose a Course. Because this is intended to be a hands-on workshop, you will want to focus on a course that you will be teaching in Spring or in the near future. However, choosing a course that you want to reimagine but don’t have plans to teach soon could also work.

• IDEA ratings for your course. You will want to access the online portal during the session, but it may also be helpful to print out your IDEA diagnostic report for your course.

• Relevant Course Materials. You will want to have at least your course syllabus printed or accessible during the workshop. Major assignments, readings, or activities may also be relevant to your reflections during the workshop.

What to Expect:

• We will spend a short period of time gaining an overview of what is available through the IDEA rating system

• Several brief breakout sessions (some for individual work, some for small group discussion) focusing on choosing learning objectives and aligning them with course elements.

• Beyond IDEA. We will end with time to explore customization options and questions that student ratings can not or should not be used to address.