The General Assembly passed a resolution yesterday, Feb. 25, that states the Temple Student Government believes students should have access to results of the Student Feedback Forms.
“We believe that students should have access to the information on these forms,” TSG Student Body President David Lopez said.
Lopez, along with members of his administration, has worked closely with Senior Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies Peter Jones, Associate Director of Student Activities Chris Carey and Vice President of Student Affairs Theresa Powell to understand the true possibility of this initiative.
“Working with them, we kind of found out how feasible it is, if it is something that could be implemented in a certain time frame, and what kind of hurdles we would face,” Lopez said.
This resolution comes one week after Projects Manager for Assessment and Survey Research Dana Kerr presented that a statement – “I would view course and teachers evaluations if they were available” – received a 92 percent favorability response on the 2012 Temple University Student Questionnaire.
The resolution recommends that “students be given access to selected quantitative data for responses to ten SFF evaluation items, using TUPortal or some other secure intranet solution.”
Lopez is open to the number of responses students would have access to, but said the prompt, “I learned a great deal in this course,” is most important.
“That doesn’t just captivate how well the professors did, but it also captivates the course itself,” Lopez said.
Responses to the open-ended questions would not be immediately available for students to view.
Resolution GA/1/1.1 also requests that all students complete SFF evluations before they are granted access to the information, past ratings be published on the website, and a common template be used to present the SFF data.
Although Lopez and his administration do not have a timeline for this initiative and are still unclear on some of the details, they are confident it is moving in a positive direction.
Lopez plans to meet with Provost Hai-Lung Dai Friday, March 1, to discuss it.
The General Assembly also hosted Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Assessment and Institutional Research Jodi Levine Laufgraben at its weekly meeting.
Laufgraben announced that the university is eliminating the wash-out period for all future semesters. The wash-out period is when the university would cancel student’s scheduled classes before the semester if they had not satisfied the payment requirements.
Laufgraben said the university is changing its billing and payment expectations. Now, students will need to accept a Student Financial Responsibility Statement at the beginning of each semester that states that the student understands their duty to pay for all classes for which they are registered.
Laufgraben said that the university is still “hammering out the details” of the new system.
Laufgraben also announced that, starting with priority registrations for Summer 2013 and Fall 2013 semesters, a waitlist will be available for closed courses through Self-Service Banner.
Students will have the ability to place themselves on a waitlist if a course is full, but Laufgraben noted that this feature will not be used to “section shop” within a course.
When a seat becomes available in a course with a waitlist, the program will notify the first student on the list and allow that student 72 hours to take the seat.
Laura Detter can be reached at laura.detter@temple.edu.
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