IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction Instrument (Tips and Tricks)

  1. The best piece of data to use off of the IDEA reports for personnel decisions (i.e. promotion/tenure) is the Progress on Relevant Objectives data (IDEA Center recommendation).  This is reported as a T-score and is graphed on the reports.  It is derived from a combination of the numbers from the objectives you chose as important or essential (essential has a weight of two, important a weight of one) on the faculty information form (FIF) for this course.  This data is on page 2 of the IDEA faculty reports.
  2. A common way of presenting that data in a Record of Service is by identifying the range a score fell.  For example, a T-Score of 59 falls in the Above Average range which includes 20% of all the T-scores.
  3. The IDEA Center considers faculty falling in the “Average” range (middle 40%) to be effective teachers.
  4. Other data that the IDEA center suggests as useful in personnel decisions are the Excellence of Teacher, Excellence of course, and Improved Student Attitude questions, also reported on page two of the IDEA faculty reports.
  5. Some faculty use the data reported for individual objectives (Page 3 of reports)
  6. When comparing adjusted T-scores against the normalized data set, note that a score should be 0.3 or greater away to be considered a significant difference.
  7. The adjusted score accounts for student motivation, class size, and some other factors.  It should be considered to be a truer reflection of teaching effectiveness than the raw score.
  8. Note that the IDEA report format changed dramatically in 1995, and slightly in 2002.
  9. Note that the IDEA database was updated in 1998 and 2002.  Both times the baselines for the items on page 2 and 3 of the report went down slightly.

CSTL has copies of all faculty IDEA reports.  If you need a copy, please let us know at x-2298.