Ontario Tech University and the UOITFA are pleased to announce that the parties have agreed to a process for addressing and/or removing inappropriate comments from student course feedback surveys. This process stems from a set of recommendations that came from the joint Student Course Feedback Surveys working group. The final report and recommendations of that working group may be found here.
The process for raising and/or addressing inappropriate comments in student course feedback surveys is as follows:
Step 1: In response to Recommendations 6[1] and 8[2]:
Using a process reviewed by the Parties, a third party reviewer (e.g., CCI) reviews and redacts inappropriate content from the qualitative comments summaries provided to Faculty Members. Egregious or questionable comments and content are referred to the Administration for review.
The Administration reviews the egregious and questionable comments and content. If deemed discriminatory, harassing, or otherwise inappropriate, that individual student survey is removed in its entirety from the final Student Course Feedback Survey (SCFS) summary report.
A Faculty Member will be notified when egregious and/or questionable comments or content is/are deleted from a SCFS summary report. A Faculty member may review the deleted comments should they so choose.
Step 2: In response to Recommendation 7[3]:
Following review and redaction by the third party reviewer, Faculty members who detect that additional discriminatory, harassing or otherwise inappropriate comments may exist in a SCFS summary report may submit a written request to their Dean to discuss the matter. The written request will provide a detailed rationale for the request or, at minimum, a brief summary of the issue they wish to discuss.
If the Dean agrees, the egregious and/or questionable comments will be flagged and redacted from the SCFS summary report. If the Faculty Member opts to only have the comments removed, the Dean will prepare a written memo acknowledging agreement to the redaction. This memo will be appended to the SCFS report. If the Faculty Member opts to have the full content of the offending individual student survey removed from the summary report, there will be no record of the summary report in the Official File during career review processes pending deletion of the individual student survey from the summary report. The summary report will be returned to the Official File once the summary report has been modified.
Should a Dean deny a request to have comments flagged or removed, they will do so, in writing with detailed reasons, within 10 days of a request.
[1] Recommendation 6: That a clear process for the redaction or deletion of comments prior to reporting be formalized. If the process results in the deletion of comments, the entire survey will be deleted. Faculty members will be given the opportunity to view any redacted or deleted comments should they so choose.
[2] Recommendation 8: That a student’s entire survey be deleted if inappropriate comments that result in the deletion of their comments are made, so that both inappropriate comments and their associated scores will be removed.
[3] Recommendation 7: That a mechanism for faculty members to raise concerns about and to have inappropriate comments or the entire survey removed from their student course feedback surveys be implemented, in consultation with the Association.