The faculty member joins CAFE by filling in the CAFE Submission Form located on this website. A valid Course Reference Number (CRN) must be entered for each section of a course taught by the instructor. To obtain your CRN number check the current Schedule of Classes or ask your department secretary.

The CAFE system receives your form, returns an acknowledgement to the faculty member via e-mail, generates the questionnaires on computer scan forms, and prepares the packets with enough copies and instructions for the students. The packets are distributed to the respective faculty through their department.

The evaluation is administered during the last week of instruction. All materials are returned to the CAFE Coordinator. The CAFE Coordinator has the questionnaire forms scanned and processed through the computer analysis program(s), and report(s) printed. The questionnaire forms and evaluation reports are returned to the respective faculty member after the semester is over. Each instructor will receive one copy of the Course/Instructor Report for each course taught. The report will contain the evaluation items on the questionnaire for the course, plus descriptive statistics such as number of students included using the item, mean score of students evaluated, standard deviation, at levels of campus-wide, department, course, and class. Comparative information will be given for the three campus-wide items and the multiple choice items.

Confidentiality
All information about individual instructors and courses will be held in strict confidence. Results will be released only to the instructor participating in the service, or to his or her designee. However, each individual faculty member is viewed as a professional, under the faculty contract, with the professional responsibility of sharing the results with his/her department chair.

The Submission Form
Each form will consist of several parts -- Background Information, Campus-Wide Items, and at the department's or instructor's option, a section of Additional Items from the CAFE Catalog of Items. Intended for use on a scan form, the questionnaire can have at most, 23 items on the front of the form, and at most, 7 open-ended questions on the back.

Background Information.
Each questionnaire will begin with a Background Information section that requests of the student, the following information (Items 1-3):

• Class Level
• Gender
• Course Elective/Required

Campus-Wide Items.
The next section includes three campus-wide items which will appear on ALL questionnaires (Items 4-6):

• The instructor demonstrates knowledge of course content.
• The instructor fulfilled the goals of the course.
• The instructor communicates effectively.

Additional Items.
It is a feature of this system that an instructor (or department) can select items from the Catalog of Items for inclusion within the questionnaire. An instructor can select items to gain understanding and perspective regarding her/his course. This enables the instructor to customize the questionnaire, e.g. towards assessing an innovative teaching technique, a different class style or format, or new material incorporated in the course.

Items within the Catalog are of two types, depending on the type of responses expected:

• Strongly Disagree/Agree. Multiple-choice responses on a five-point scale, ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree.There can be a maximum of only 17 Strongly Disagree/Agree items selected by the department, instructor, or both. There may also be a maximum of 7 open-ended items. Options or combinations of options below are available.
  
• Open-Ended. Written comments in response to a question. As many as seven open-ended questions may be chosen from the Open-Ended Questions section of the Catalog. These questions will appear on the back of the questionnaire form. These questions can encourage and focus student comments on specific aspects of the course.

Department Items
Several departments (and colleges) have elected to designate a set of items, from the Catalog of Items , for use as Department Items. All instructors in the department will be given these items and be required to include this set of items for their individual questionnaires. Check with your department chair.