SPOT Questionnaires: Ordering and Administering

These pages are designed to assist Administrative Assistants/Officers/Secretaries and other staff members who may be asked to order and photocopy Student Perceptions of Teaching (SPOT) questionnaires, and/or administer the surveys.

About SPOT Surveys

CATL prepares SPOT questionnaires at the request of UWA staff members teaching or coordinating particular units. Teaching evaluation through SPOT surveys is voluntary and the questionnaire design is flexible. Survey results are confidential and are provided only to the academic staff member whose teaching/unit was evaluated. Information about SPOT is available from the CATL Home Page. This information includes:

• Policy
• Purpose
• Student Considerations
• Survey Structure
• Developmental Emphasis
• Procedures for Ordering and Administering Your Questionnaires
• Item Bank
• Questionnaire Order Form
• Interpretation of SPOT Results Reports
• SPOT Rating Interpretation Guides

How SPOT works

Some of the issues that may be of interest to you are as follows:

• Ordering questionnaires
• When to conduct a survey
• Consent forms
• Photocopying
• Carrying out the survey
• Returning completed questionnaires

1. Ordering questionnaires

SPOT questionnaires can be requested by completing an online order form which is available on the Web. You may also request a questionnaire by email to spotoffice@admin.uwa.edu.au.

If you are asked to order a questionnaire and there is no standard format in place within the department, the following information should be supplied by the coordinator/teacher:

• the items (questions) to be used in the surveys, i.e. the item numbers in the SPOT item bank
• name of unit
• name(s) of lecturer(s)
• name(s) of tutor(s)
• name of the unit coordinaor (if the unit is to be surveyed, i.e. "About the Unit …")

Ensure that the names of all lecturers and tutors are included as students can get confused if the relevant person's name is not on the survey form.

Alternatively a SPOT questionnaire may be re-ordered by sending a hard copy of the previous questionnaire through the internal mail to the SPOT Administrative Officer with amendments marked, a note advising the date the survey is to be carried out and contact details of the person requiring the questionnaire.

If the coordinator/teacher requests the same items as in a previous survey but a copy of the questionnaire is unavailable, it would be helpful to know the batch number of the previous questionnaire (found on the top right hand corner of the report) and the semester/year in which the survey was carried out, as this is how the data are stored in the SPOT database. If the batch number is not known please indicate the name of the lecturer who previously ordered the questionnaire, name of unit and the probable date (semester/year) of the survey.

Please check with the coordinator if there are any changes to a previous questionnaire, e.g. the lecturer and unit may be the same but the tutors may be different.

It may be useful to keep a copy of the questionnaire (with the academic's permission), so that you have all the information to order a similar questionnaire at a later date.

If lecturers and/or tutors are not in the UWA internal directory or `who is' in email we will require their email addresses in order to send out the survey reports. All reports are sent by email as PDF attachments. It will save time if email addresses are supplied when ordering the questionnaire.

NB: Questionnaires are produced within a week of receiving orders. If the master copy is not received within this time, please check with the SPOT Administrative Officer to ensure your order has been received.

2. When to Conduct a Survey

Surveys are often carried out towards the end of each semester. However, if a short survey is conducted earlier in the semester, i.e. just before or after the mid- semester break, it gives the students an opportunity to provide early feedback on teaching/unit and the lecturer has the opportunity to discuss the survey outcomes with students and perhaps make adjustments if required.

3. Consent Forms

If a unit coordinator requests a questionnaire for all lecturers and tutors involved in the unit, the questionnaire is produced by CATL on the assumption that all lecturers and tutors named in the survey have agreed to the survey being carried out.

Written authorisation must be received by CATL in order to release a copy of the SPOT report to anyone other than the person whose teaching was evaluated. If students' written comments are to be included, it must be specified in the authorisation to release the SPOT report.

4. Photocopying

CATL will send only one printed copy of the questionnaire. The required number of photocopies to be distributed to students are to be made in the department.

Please take particular care when photocopying. The questionnaires are scanned electronically and in order for the software to read the data accurately, all recognition marks must be visible and clear. Please ensure that the recognition squares in the four corners of the questionnaire are not cut off, smudged or skewed.

See examples of questionnaires:

• Scanner recognition marks
• Skewed as a result of photocopying resulting in missing scanner mark
• Incomplete scanner recognition marks

Data from poorly photocopied questionnaires may have to be entered manually which is a time-consuming procedure and causes a delay in sending out reports. Occasionally large bundles of completed questionnaires that arrive at CATL include some with clear scanner marks and others unreadable by the scanner. These questionnaires were probably photocopied in batches. Therefore please check at the beginning of each photocopy session.

For questionnaires that have two pages please photocopy back to back, i.e. two pages on one sheet of paper. If the two pages are photocopied on separate sheets and stapled together, the staples must be removed by ETU staff before the questionnaires can be scanned. Sometimes the scanner marks are damaged while removing staples. Photocopying two pages to a sheet saves time and other resources.

NB: Please inform the SPOT Administrative Officer if modifications to the questionnaires are required. CATL staff will make the changes to the questionnaire and the SPOT database. If modifications to the questionnaires are not made by CATL, the report, which is based on the SPOT database, may not reflect the changes.

Modifications to questionnaires can be made at an hour's notice as long as someone can come and pick up the new master copy from CATL.

5. Carrying out survey

If you are the survey administrator and have the opportunity of speaking to students, please:

• remind students to fill in the circles completely rather than just ticking or crossing them
• ask students not to doodle on the questionnaires as this may interfere with the scanning process
• go through the process of identifying the correct tutor if more than one tutor is named on the questionnaire, i.e. the first name on the line will usually correspond to the first circle, the second name to the second circle etc.
• ask students not to fold the questionnaires as this interferes with scanning
• ask them to use dark pen or pencil and avoid using highlighters as the scanner cannot read them.

Where surveys using the same questionnaire are to be carried out at different times, it may be helpful to make an OHP transparency with instructions to assist students in filling out the survey forms correctly. This is particularly useful where the students are asked to make a selection from a given list. For instance where there are a number of tutors and the students are asked to select their own tutor by filling in the appropriate circle.

Students are sometimes confused as to why they are asked to complete SPOT questionnaires and can be apathetic, especially if they have been asked to complete them for a number of units. It could be encouraging if the administrator is able to explain why the survey is being conducted, e.g. to give students an opportunity to comment on the teaching/unit, for a departmental review and to provide feedback to the teacher so that he/she is able to make adjustment to the unit/teaching style if necessary. Administrators may need to liaise with the coordinator to obtain this information prior to administering the questionnaire.

6. Returning questionnaires to Evaluation of Teaching

Address the envelope to the "SPOT Administrative Officer (CATL), M400" and send it through the internal mail.

If surveys are carried out at separate times using the same questionnaire, for instance in tutorials, please mark the envelopes (e.g. 1 of 3, 2 of 3 and 3 of 3). Where possible please return them together i.e. in one large envelope or bundled together. If students are administering the questionnaires, please ask them to return the sealed envelopes to the main office to be held in a secure place until all bundles have been received. Then forward them together to CATL. If the surveys are to be carried out at separate times, please inform CATL staff when ordering the questionnaires. CATL will then supply sufficient administration information sheets to be lightly glued to the back of the envelopes and instruction sheets to be inserted in each envelope.

Please seal envelopes securely to ensure that questionnaires do not fall out in the internal mail.

Please contact Daranee Chenhall, Administrative/Research Officer(extension 2817) or Professor Denise Chalmers, Director (extension 2603) if you require further information or assistance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT