About the Instructional Assessment System (IAS)

What is the IAS?

Our Instructional Assessment System (IAS) provides a method to collect and report student ratings of instruction. It consists of a well-established paper-based system using machine-readable evaluation forms, supplemented by a recently created online system. We offer:

  • a collection of scannable course evaluation forms to assess various instructional formats or educational outcomes, all of which can be augmented with instructor-created questions.
  • end-of-term reports
  • annual ratings summaries for each department and college
  • an open-ended Comment Sheet

IAS Online achieves analogous flexibility with regard to course format by allowing program staff to select from a pool of items or add original course-specific item text via an interactive user interface.

How are course evaluations used?

Ratings have direct implications for improving the course or method of teaching, or for identifying areas in which more specific diagnostic information is needed. Students use ratings to help them choose courses effectively. Administrators need comparative information for promotion and tenure decisions, and to make decisions about course offerings and teaching assignments.

Development of Course Evaluation Forms:

The approach taken in the development of the IAS was to isolate broad course types that cut across discipline lines, and to create a separate evaluation form by varying diagnostic items for each type of instructional format.

IAS evaluation forms are configured with separate sets of items to assess three functions, termed informative, normative, and diagnostic respectively. Items designed to serve informative and normative functions were made common to all forms to allow comparisons across classes.

  • Informative items are directed toward specific characteristics of a course or instructor to provide information to students in choosing courses or programs.
  • Normative items are designed to be global in nature, implying no basic philosophy of instruction, and applying equally well to all types of classes.
  • Diagnostic items are intended to examine the instructional process and are unique to the type of instruction given.

Students are asked to provide ratings on a six-point Likert scale ranging from excellent to very poor.

Development of IAS Online:

IAS Online extends the paper-based Instructional Assessment System (IAS) to the online environment. This system is most appropriately used to assess courses that are themselves delivered over the Internet, so that student access to evaluation forms can be integrated easily into course delivery.

IAS Form I, designed to evaluate distance learning courses, was used as a starting point and augmented with items either taken from other IAS forms or created specifically for IAS Online.

To further accommodate the wide diversity of courses having some type of online component, program staff may add their own course-specific items at the time they "build" the evaluation form.