Questioner: Anonymous
Posted to: Mark Workman, Provost Academic Affairs
“I would like to submit the following questions anonymously to the Faculty Association and ask for a written response from the administration. It seems UNF posted the Student ISQ evaluations of faculty to comply with state laws.
1. Why were faculty not informed?
2. Why was only one item selected?
3. Why were the grade distributions posted as well? What is the rationale? Is it required by law to post those?
4. Why are faculty IDEA ratings of administrators not shared with faculty? Would those ratings not fall under the Florida sunshine law? Even if it is not required by law, what is the reason not to make these ratings of administrators available, especially in light of greater transparency and accountability?”
Written response from Former Provost Mark Workman, Academic Affairs:
Gordon,
Please share this statement or not, verbally or in writing, as you see fit.
Thanks.
Mark
It is important that we remind or inform concerned faculty that the GDRs by instructor are grade distribution reports already posted for the university on the www.myedu.com website. It is Academic Affairs’ understanding that for several years, students requested UNF’s participation in the myedu.com site – the Registrar would create a file and the General Counsel’s office would then send (or clear the Registrar to send) an instructor-level grade distribution report to myedu.com; this data was considered public information. Because instructor-level grade distribution reports were deemed to be public information, the Registrar was essentially responding to the student’s public records request by providing myedu.com with the data to upload on its site. Once on the myedu.com site, students created (free) accounts to access this information. Before Student Government approached Academic Affairs with its request, the SG President and Vice President researched other institutional websites and provided Academic Affairs with examples of GDRs (Texas A&M and Indiana University-Bloomington) which made this data available to students on the home university’s website. This would obviate the need for UNF to send this data to myedu.com and require students to create accounts. SG requested the same ease of access to this data for UNF students. Once Academic Affairs confirmed that the Registrar and General Counsel were providing this data to myedu.com and there were no issues of GDRs having limited access protection, we asked the SG President and Vice President to discuss their request with the President of Faculty Association. Following that discussion, ITS and Enrollment Services worked with SG to post the data in a highly accessible and visible place on UNF’s website. The project was completed ahead of schedule thus the notification to students and faculty followed the posting of the data on UNF’s site.
With regard to the question of using aggregated data, it seemed impractical to offer to students this option since they were already accessing instructor-level data through myunf.edu. To restrict the data they already had access to via myedu.com would not be responding to the request for this (public) data. Academic Affairs suggests that representatives of the Faculty Association or General Counsel meet with Student Government to discuss the possibility of providing GDRs that are aggregated at the department level. Since SG requested this data, it seems they would be the appropriate body to discuss other options.
