Evaluations of our teaching faculty and residents are critical to the ongoing improvement of teaching, to our students’ learning environment, and to the effectiveness of our curriculum.

In the past, student evaluations of instructors have been invisible to individual instructors AND to course directors until 3 or more students completed an evaluation of a given instructor (with the exception of one-on-one preceptorships in FPC and LCE). Once three evaluations were submitted for a given instructor, s/he could view an aggregate report of the three evaluations. Over the past 2 years curriculum committees, all including student representation, have debated the merits of this rule and carefully evaluated its impact. A critical need for timely and constructive feedback to instructors has been identified, resulting in the recommendation that the 3-evaluation threshold be lifted.

The change in policy to allow instructors to view evaluations regardless of the number of evaluations completed WILL still require that the instructor has completed a reciprocal evaluation on the student. The rule that restricts viewing of individual evaluations as they are posted will be removed from our evaluation system (eValue) on January 1, 2006, thus releasing all evaluations of instructors completed by students –provided that the instructor has met the reciprocity requirement.

Along with maintenance of reciprocity rules, student names will continue to be withheld on evaluations completed by students. If you have any concerns regarding evaluations you have completed on faculty members prior to this announcement, please feel free to contact Arianne Teherani, Assistant Director for Evaluations in the Office of Educational Technology at teherani@medsch.ucsf.edu.

This change in evaluation policy was reviewed and approved by the Essential Core Course Committee, the Clinical Core Operations Committee and the Committee on Curriculum and Educational Policy.