Suggestions for Developing Sampling Procedures
in Student Evaluations for Tenure and Promotion Reviews

The candidate and initiator must decide on a process for selecting a sample of students to participate in the evaluation of the candidate's teaching. A sample of 60 current students and recent graduates will be selected. According to the Faculty Manual, "the sample of students and alumni shall be selected so as to be representative of the candidate's current and past teaching responsibilities." There are several ways to achieve representativeness. The most straightforward approach is a simple random sample drawn from all the students enrolled in the courses and other instructional settings included on the verified course lists. However, in some cases, a different kind of sampling procedure may produce a more representative sample. A candidate's courses may be divided into subgroups reflecting his or her teaching responsibilities, and specified percentages of the sample of students may be drawn from each subgroup to reflect the distribution of the candidate's responsibilities. For example:

If half the candidate's courses are upper-division courses, 50% of the sample could be drawn from upper- division courses and 50% from lower division courses. Since upper-division courses typically have smaller enrollments, students from upper division courses would thus be "over-represented" in the sample as a percentage of the total number of students the faculty member taught, but the final sample would be more representative of the faculty member's teaching assignments.

If the candidate has regularly offered two courses a year through an interdisciplinary program outside his or her department (e.g., Environmental Studies or Asian Studies), 33.3% of the sample could be drawn from the interdisciplinary courses and 66.7% from the departmental courses.

If the candidate has offered team-taught courses, it may be wise to under-sample students from the team-taught courses, because students often have difficulty distinguishing the contributions of different faculty members in team-teaching situations, particularly if the team includes several instructors.

The candidate and initiator are welcome to consult with E&A in planning the sampling procedure. A description of the sample and sampling procedure will be provided by E&A for inclusion in the candidate's dossier.

If there are any questions on any of the above, please contact E&A staff.