Assignment of Responsibilities

Student’s Responsibilities

  1. The University has repeatedly affirmed the importance of and necessity for students to be able to provide confidential and timely feedback to faculty members regarding their teaching. This feedback comprises part of the information which is used to assess faculty performance, and is considered in reappointment, promotion and tenure decisions. As such, UBC believes that participating in teaching evaluation is a student responsibility which should be approached with due seriousness.

University Administration Responsibilities

  1. The Vice President Academic and Provost shall report annually to Senate on teaching quality, effectiveness, and evaluation, and on the extent to which the university is reaching its learning goals.
  2. The University will support a central repository of information about student evaluation of teaching that contains such things as policy, historical information, best practice guidelines, etc., to facilitate professional development, information gathering, and scholarly discourse as well as avoid duplication of effort.

Faculty & Department/Unit Shared Responsibilities

  1. Deans, Directors and Department Heads will ensure that the Student Evaluations of Teaching and administered according to this policy.
  2. Deans, Directors, Department Heads and members of relevant committees shall review the procedures and instruments for the evaluation of teaching in their units and ensure that they are consistent with the statements made in this policy document.
  3. Each Faculty and Department shall establish clear, written criteria which will be used to assess unsatisfactory teaching performance. These criteria shall be made known to anyone who is working in a teaching capacity (including Teaching Assistants).
  4. Deans, Directors and Department Heads shall take action in response to results which show less than satisfactory teaching performance, and a report of such action shall be submitted annually to the Vice President Academic and Provost in the case of Deans and to the Dean in the case of Directors and Heads.
  5. All units shall give serious consideration to establishing a committee whose function is to monitor the processes whereby teaching is evaluated and whose membership includes student representation.

Faculty Level Responsibilities

  1. Each Faculty shall ensure that there is a level of uniformity in the evaluation questionnaires used by individual teaching units to allow the Faculty to make available statistical summary data on overall teaching effectiveness in individual courses.
  2. Each Faculty shall develop policies and procedures that ensure access for their Professors, Instructors and Teaching Assistants to peer-based teaching development programs.

Department Head’s or Director’s Responsibilities

  1. Heads or Directors of teaching units, or their delegates, shall use the results of teaching evaluations as one component in assessing teaching performance when recommending annual merit/performance salary adjustment increases for faculty, and for the purposes of recommendations concerning tenure and/or promotion.
  2. Heads or Directors of teaching units, or their delegates, shall ensure that all faculty whose teaching is being assessed by students are given the opportunity to provide or withhold consent to their Student Evaluations of Teaching data being released to the students, as stipulated by this policy. However, these data will be used by UBC employees designated with the authority for the assessment of faculty for merit and/or performance adjustment salary awards, promotion, tenure and institutional recognition.
  3. Each unit head must be responsible for ensuring that the criteria are set high enough to motivate teachers to improve the effectiveness of their teaching.

Faculty Member’s Responsibilities

  1. Anyone teaching a course at UBC is responsible for familiarizing themselves with the policies and expectations related to student evaluation of teaching.
  2. Anyone teaching a course at UBC is strongly urged to avail themselves of services offered through UBC teaching and scholarly service units (e.g., CTLT, Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) in order to understand how they can use student evaluations of teaching to inform and improve their teaching practice.