The end of an era has arrived. The staff required to maintain the Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) software is no longer available. SPTE was written in Fortran, and it won’t be cost-effective for staff members to reverse engineer it. Since pedagogy and survey methods have advanced during the last few decades, and highly configurable software with high response rates is now available, the SPTE software will retire at the end of spring 2023.
In the meantime, WSU has purchased the Course Evaluations and Surveys (CES) platform from Watermark, which they are installing for a small pilot group to test in summer 2022. During the next few months, WSU’s Faculty Senate will oversee the development of a new set of university questions to norm (per Kansas Board of Region requirements), configure the system to the university’s needs, test the system more widely and develop best practices for the new platform.
Due to this update, all WSU Departments, colleges and tenure and promotion (T&P) committees will need to update T&P policies and procedures to ensure that faculty are not adversely affected by the change. The Office of Instructional Resources is currently working to develop instructor training, including a session that will be available at the August Academic Resources Conference. Current details and developments will also be posted on the Understanding Watermark Software website.
Faculty and staff should keep an eye out for opportunities available in the future to sign up as a CES tester or to be a part of the teaching evaluation task force for fall 2022.
For more information or to ask questions, please contact David Wright, project director.
