The Faculty Evaluation Plan = Lifelong Learning
Abby Hemingway
Paradise Valley Community College

There has been much interest about the application of Margaret Wheatley's ideas in Leadership and the New Science to education. She contends that organizations tend to be hierarchical. But, the reality is, people are the most creative, efficient, and productive when they are freed from the constraints of the hierarchy. The best results appear when they create their own order out of chaos, so to speak, linking up with people whom they trust, respect, and/or just feel comfortable with.

That concept was dramatically reinforced when the District Faculty Evaluation Committee queried the faculty to find out their attitudes about how improvement in teaching and related fields really takes place. Faculty overwhelmingly responded that the specific need for improvement must come from the faculty member him or herself and that interaction with colleagues, to this end, is essential. The proposed Faculty Evaluation Plan (FEP) is constructed around these two factors.

The FEP allows and encourages freedom of choice, rather than the confinement of the existing hierarchy. One of the great strengths of the FEP is that it encourages faculty to keep their own learning process alive, consistent with the philosophy of the many faculty driven initiatives of the last few years. We encourage continuous or life-long learning in our classrooms, so it makes sense that any system by which faculty are evaluated would include this aspect of education.

Depending on one's frame of reference, the FEP can seem an exciting opportunity to completely control one's choice of a project, or it can appear daunting in its lack of prescriptions. Therefore, it is essential that the ideas of the pioneering types who have volunteered to participate in the FEP pilot program, be shared. This article is meant to introduce a few of these ideas, which I hope will result in the creation of a faculty network to spread ideas for new approaches.

For example, seven members of the Communications and Humanities Division at PVCC decided to use a learning circle for constructing their FEP. The seven members meet for an hour every other Friday with, in FEP terminology, their six "mentors." This group decided to collaborate on a student evaluation questionnaire that would identify strengths and weaknesses of their individual instruction methods. The Institutional Researcher converted the questions into a Likert Scale survey that each member administered. The results of the survey were tabulated individually and as a group, allowing discussions to focus on individual concerns, getting suggestions from the other mentors and general concerns voiced by the students. Through the discussion of student concerns, the group agreed that students needed clarification on teacher expectations as it applied to assigning grades to essays in English 101, 102 and literature courses. They decided that each member would devise an individual rubric, using his or her own criteria for assigning grades from A to F. The combined ideas would be used to develop a common rubric for all to use, and in addition, they would hand this out to their students.

By using the learning circle/collaborative method, each faculty member has the experience and expertise of several others in addition to having greater numbers of students from which to tap information. Also, procrastination, a very real potential with this new approach to evaluation, is limited.

Faculty have been quite creative in their use of the FEP to further their own learning. Since the use of technology in the classroom presents all of us with challenges, several plans have included the design of student projects using the Internet and electronic forum. Some faculty are naturally drawn to these new technologies and have easily come up with ways to include them into their curricula. These faculty can be invaluable mentors, to help others not so inclined, but who are daring enough to try. Also, the creation of distance learning courses readily lends itself to an FEP examination. We can learn from those who have braved this new medium so we don't make too many of the same mistakes. Integrated learning is yet another area that adapts perfectly to the new evaluation format. Faculty who are principally involved could serve as each other's mentors. The ideas are as endless as faculty creativity will allow.

The FEP also promotes academic freedom since the evaluated faculty members decide who, if anyone, comes into their classrooms and they create their own evaluation criteria, rather than being bound by criteria and/or observations of the college administration. What better way to exercise our academic freedom and be an active learner at the same time?

Most of the teachers I have met in my twenty-four years of teaching continually analyze what went right or what went wrong each day in their classes. This is where the real process of improvement begins, within each of us. The FEP process recognizes that we as professionals know best what our own needs are, and provides us with a practical way to meet these needs.