Dear Faculty,
I am pleased to share an update regarding changes to the university’s Course Instructor Survey (CIS) system in response to recommendations shared in a recent Faculty Council resolution. As outlined in the resolution, the Task Force on Student Feedback on Teaching identified a series of recommendations for redesigning student course exit surveys, including a revised process for soliciting and using student feedback, awareness of potential equity issues, and a plan for continuous assessment and regular review.
After a thorough review of the Council’s feedback and findings, the university has procured Explorance Blue, a proven web-based survey platform that offers the flexibility, customization and real-time tracking of student response rates that are critically important to our faculty.
Benefits of the Explorance Blue platform include:
- Online integration with Canvas for student accessibility
- Real-time tracking of survey response rates
- Messaging capability within Canvas to notify students of missing surveys
- Ability to administer surveys for multiple instructors of record
- Ability for instructors and department administrators to customize forms
- Ability to administer formative mid-semester surveys
- Access to downloadable raw data so instructors can conduct advanced analysis, if desired
Next Steps
In preparation for a campus-wide rollout in fall 2022, the university will launch a pilot of the new course survey system with several departments this summer. The pilot will include a test of new survey questions, as well as a limited rollout of some of the platform’s key features.
We will soon be publishing a list of FAQs on the Provost Office website. The website will provide more information on campus implementation as we get closer to the fall semester. In addition, we plan to share periodic updates and insights over the course of the summer as we learn more about how the survey platform performs in the pilot in real-time.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about the new survey, don’t hesitate to reach out to my office at provost.office@utexas.edu.
I want to thank members of the UT Faculty Council and the Task Force on Student Feedback on Teaching for their time and thoughtful analysis of our course instructor survey needs. Their recommendations provided the critical guidance we needed to ensure that the university identified a trusted vendor that could accommodate our requirements and transform our course instructor surveys into a powerful evaluation and analytics tool.
I am confident that this new platform will benefit our faculty and students, and I look forward to sharing more updates and information as we approach implementation in the fall.
Sincerely,
Sharon L. Wood
Executive Vice President and Provost