April Steppe has always taken her professors' semester-end feedback forms seriously.

But Steppe (junior-horticulture) never realized that her responses to the Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness are considered when her teachers are up for promotion and tenure, and she thinks some questions could be improved to better reflect her views.

Discussions are underway in the University Faculty Senate's faculty affairs committee to develop a standard SRTE form that would be used in every class, and would ask a consistent set of professor-related questions.

"We need to get a better assessment of the learning environment," said Vice Provost Grace Hampton. "The real effort for the proposed change is to present information in a way so we can get a sense of how the students view and how they understand what is going on in the class."

The purpose of an SRTE is twofold -- to help evaluate faculty members annually and to provide information for promotion and tenure evaluations.

But the evaluations the University now uses vary among academic departments. Selected questions come from a list of more than 150 possible items. A review of the SRTE process has found that some questions are redundant or too broad, while others are unclearly worded.

"The original set was a cafeteria sort of system of pools of items," Hampton said. "The sense was that in reviewing faculty (for tenure and promotion) . . . sometimes there might not be a lot of correlation between various colleges and units. They were not really focused on the same concepts."

Those concerns have prompted members of the committee to consider recommending a revised SRTE that would consist of three sections:

-- A uniform set of about 12 questions about professors' teaching performance.

-- A section where individual departments or faculty members can ask more specific discipline-related questions.

-- A space for students to submit open-ended comments and complaints.

The proposed standard questions were selected after Dennis Roberts, professor of educational psychology, conducted an experimental SRTE pilot study last semester at the committee's request.

About 2,200 students and 40 faculty members University-wide tested the reliability, clarity and legitimacy of questions to find out which ones should be included. Students were asked to rate their professors and the quality of the questions.

Past SRTE forms have asked students to evaluate the quality of their teachers and classes, but the proposed set of uniform questions would change that.

"The items deal with the instructors exclusively," Roberts said. "It's the instructor that's getting promotion and tenure, not a course."

Steppe believes the shift in emphasis toward professor-oriented questions would improve the effectiveness of SRTEs.

"That's better, because most of the time the teacher's the most important thing in a class for whether you can learn easily or have trouble," she said.

But the proposed SRTE changes are only a step in improving the feedback process, said Mary Dupuis, director of academic affairs and professor of education at the DuBois Campus.

"I think it's something we need to continue to work on," Dupuis said. "I don't know if it'll ever be perfect. We just need more information than those numbers can give us. I think it's a matter of providing a way for students to give their views that is a little less structured, a little more open."

Despite any changes that may occur, Roberts thinks the evaluations will not be fully effective unless students think that their answers are valued.

"If you don't think this information is going to be used in any way, then why take the time to fill out the form?" Roberts asks.