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Student Perception of Instruction

The end-of-semester student evaluation forms are known as Student Perception of Instruction (SPI or SPoI) forms at UCF. Find information about the questions used and the overall process at Faculty Excellence.

Ideas for Improving SPI Results

Here are some ideas for improving SPI results:

  1. Consider soliciting feedback from students much earlier in the semester, while there is still time to make changes in the current term. You could use this midterm feedback form or create your own.
  2. Be transparent about why you are asking students for their feedback. Explaining to them that their feedback is valuable and that it can help shape their learning experience can be motivating for students.
  3. Vary your teaching methods to make the content more understandable and engaging for the most students possible. The Faculty Center is open from 8 AM – 5 PM Monday through Friday if you want to brainstorm ideas!
  4. Build relevance by connecting a single lesson to the bigger picture.
    • How does the content in one lesson build on what they have already studied and how will it contribute to their readiness for future lessons or courses?
    • How does what you have students do in class connect to the course and/or program learning objectives?
  5. Encourage questions. Assure students that they are not the first students to find a topic difficult and that you will do your best to answer their questions.
    • It may be helpful to remind students that you cannot answer a question if you don’t know it exists in their minds.
  6. Send students a weekly “recap” email that reminds students of what they learned during the week and the assignments that they completed and that they will have during the next week. Remind students that you are here to help them learn and remind them of the best ways of communicating with you (via email, during office hours, etc.).
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Faculty are encouraged to connect with the Faculty Center to request individualized, private consultations or perhaps arrange for a peer observation. The Faculty Center is open from 8 AM – 5 PM Monday through Friday, and services are provided to faculty free of charge.

Ideas for Increasing Student Completion Rates

Some students may not see the system-generated reminder to complete SPIs if they don’t otherwise have a reason to visit the Student Center during the SPI window. While the Student Center is where they register for classes in future terms, their registration window may not match the SPI window. Thus, instructors may wish to adopt strategies that encourage students to complete the SPIs:

  1. Send out a specific announcement about the SPI availability through Webcourses
  2. Announce the SPI availability in face-to-face classes.
  3. Remind students that their responses are anonymous.
  4. Check the SPI Count Tool (myUCF / Faculty Resources) a few times during the SPI window to ascertain whether students are completing the forms. If they are not doing so in sufficient number, consider additional announcements.
  5. Clarify who receives the responses and what the procedures are for faculty to get the SPI data.
  6. Persuade students that their SPI input truly matters:
    • You, the instructor, value their comments and want to continuously improve your teaching.
    • Their comments and ideas can influence future versions of this class and make a difference for future students.
    • Relate examples of past student suggestions that are now part of your teaching.
  7. Set aside time in face-to-face classes for students to complete the SPI using their own devices. Faculty are strongly encouraged to exit the room during the allotted time to ensure response anonymity. A good strategy to employ on such a day is to answer any questions about the course before exiting the room.
  8. Show appreciation for student responses, even if you aren’t sure that anyone has completed the SPI for your course.

Interpreting and Reacting to SPI Results

Faculty are highly encouraged to read and consider results from each semester’s SPI forms. It’s true that some departments, colleges, or university processes may use SPI results to varying degrees for administrative functions, but this kind of student feedback is also extremely valuable to instructors to learn what is, and potentially what isn’t, working in their classroom.

Ideas for reacting to SPI results:

  • Look for patterns and agreement in each class. If enough students agree on their scoring, you may want to consider that significant. If the scores are negative, you may want to consider consulting with FCTL for ideas on how to improve those scores.
  • Pay attention to trends in the SPI results over multiple semesters, whether all the numbers move in lockstep or there are particular outliers. These might suggest areas where you could try different approaches in future teaching.
  • Student comments to the free-response questions can be particularly revealing. The Likert-scale questions are sometimes completed by students in a “straight line” fashion (all questions get the same response), but free-response answers require more student thought and thus warrant attention. Think carefully about student suggestions, and weigh whether to make changes with appropriate deliberation.
  • If you resolve to make any changes based on student responses, consider making the changes immediately (to the Webcourses shell, or your syllabus, or at least via notes-to-self) while the memory is fresh.
  • Negative feedback, particularly if delivered without a tone of attempting to be constructive, can sting. If the negative feedback is rare or an outlier, it may not be worthwhile to dwell on those responses. Sometimes, students who receive poor grades choose to use the SPI process to express their dissatisfaction with their graded performance.
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Faculty who are interested in exploring the research about how to improve response rates can access these resources:

  • Chapman, D. D. & Joines, J. A. (2017). Strategies for increasing response rates for online end-of-course evaluations. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 29(1), 47–60. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1136018.pdf
  • Cone, C., Viswesh, V., Gupta, V., & Unni, E. (2018). Motivators, barriers, and strategies to improve response rate to student evaluation of teaching. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CPTL.2018.08.020
  • Crews, T. B. & Curtis, D. F. (2011). Online course evaluations: Faculty perspective and strategies for improved response rates. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(7), 865–878. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2010.493970
  • Medina, M. S., Smith, W., Kolluru, S., Sheaffer, E. A., & DiVall, M. V. (2019). A review of strategies for designing, administering, and using student ratings of instruction. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83(5), Article 7177. https://doi.org/10.5688/AJPE7177
  • Nair, C. S., Adams, P., & Mertova, P. (2008). Student engagement: The key to improving survey response rates. Quality in Higher Education, 14(3), 225–232. https://doi.org/10.1080/13538320802507505
  • Young, K. R., Joines, J. A., Standish, T., & Gallagher, V. J. (2019). Student evaluations of teaching: The impact of faculty procedures on response rates. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(1), 37–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1467878

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Can I see how many of my students completed the SPI?
    • Yes. In myUCF, click on Faculty Self-Service, then Instructors, then SPI Counts.
  2. Can I find out which individual students completed the SPI so that I can award extra credit?
    • No. Keeping students anonymous is central to the integrity of the process. It will also not work to ask students to generate a screencap of their finished process, due to the same need for anonymity (plus, one student could make such a screencap and share it with all other students). It is better to avoid any extra credit in the SPI process.
  3. Do I have any options to award extra credit?
    • Yes. One idea is to promise extra credit for the whole class if the results show a certain percentage of completions. The faculty member can use the SPI Count Tool (myUCF / Faculty Resources) to ascertain how many students did submit SPIs.
  4. Will independent study courses complete the SPI?
    • No. Internships, thesis, independent study, non-graded labs, practicum, dissertation and research hours do not require students to complete an SPI.
  5. Why did I not receive SPI results for one of my classes?
    • Data for courses with fewer than five students enrolled is intentionally excluded from the results and will not be released.
  6. Where can I get more information?
    • The Student Perception of Instruction process is governed by the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Excellence office. All requests for access to SPI results, for current or previous semesters, and any questions regarding missing course data or other errors should be directed to the Faculty Excellence office at FacultyExcellence@ucf.edu