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Generating IDQ Questionnaires for a Class

Modified on: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 10:37 AM

Introduction

The Instructor Designed Questionnaire (IDQ) system assists to reduce irrelevant items often associated with standardized questionnaires; allows for the inclusion of items relevant to the individual instructor, university, the faculty and the department; and allows for normative as well as individualized feedback on the quality of instruction.

This article describes the methods of generating Instructor Designed Questionnaires (IDQs) as well as outlining the additional requirements in order for responses to be collected in a Universal Student Ratings of Instruction (USRI) survey. It also includes links for information on additional features including generating IDQs for use in team-teaching classrooms.




Applicability

This article was written for instructors and support staff at the University of Alberta.

Access to IDQ Requisitions Online, is restricted to designated individuals: our regular 'IDQ contacts'. Normally, we have one 'IDQ contact' in each Department. To gain access to this system, please contact Test Scoring and Questionnaire Services.



Procedure

Method of generating

Normally, to generate your questionnaires, you must use the Online Requisition system.

From the information that is provided via the Online Requisition system, we create "upload files" for identification of department, faculty, students, courses and enrolments (an automated process).  This automated process depends on the accuracy of the information in PeopleSoft.

It demands that

  1. The appropriate instructor(s) - as shown at https://tsqs.srv.ualberta.ca/cgi-bin/classids/cls_query.pl - has/have been identified for the class through the use of their employee id(s) and
  2. The students enrolled in this class correspond to the information available from PeopleSoft.

When these do not hold, the departmental contact will be responsible for creating the above set of “upload files” and providing them to Test Scoring and Questionnaire Services (TSQS.) Contact TSQS to obtain the specifications.


Additional Requirements for generating an IDQ

The General Faculties Council (GFC) Policy, requiring at least 10 students in a class before numeric responses may be collected in a Universal Student Ratings of Instruction (USRI) survey,  will continue to be enforced.

  1. CoursEval supports the merging of classes into a single survey for an instructor in order to meet this minimum and/or to make allowance for the fact that credit for different courses may be received within a given class.   (This has been supported by our IDQ system for many years.)
  2. CoursEval may be used for administering questionnaires that are restricted to “comments only” when the minimum enrolment is not met (4 to 9 students). The block-id, 3OPN, contains a set of 4 recommended questions.
  3. CoursEval also supports team-teaching scenarios where open-ended questions may be repeated for each instructor and the reporting of these comments is individualized to the appropriate instructor. This eliminates the need that has existed in some departments of having separate questionnaires printed for each instructor in a team-taught class in order to achieve confidentiality among instructors.  


Related information

Additional information about the Features of IDQs is available in KB0012148.

Additional information about Generating IDQS for Team Teaching is available in KB0012144.



Keywords: IDQ, questionnaires, usri, course evaluations, tsqs
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