A big improvement has come to institutional structure in our ByCommittee platform! In light of recent conversations with institutions using the platform, we have expanded the available hierarchy to accommodate any number of administrative levels—making it possible for even institutions with more distinctive structures to benefit from academic committee support software.
Continue reading “Flexible hierarchy release in ByCommittee!”
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
Many colleges and universities are finding significant advantages in migrating faculty tenure and promotion processes, as well as their annual review and sabbatical processes, to an online environment. Following are five reasons why this is occurring:
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
If you’re a ByCommittee Promotion & Tenure user and have been setting up new case after new case for reviews at your institution, then you’re in luck. We just made that process much simpler with the addition of easy-to-use templates for setting up future promotion, tenure, or review cases.
The ability to create a template is a nice upgrade for our users, but the process by which we designed the template also shows a bit about how we go about software development at Interfolio.
One of the strongest tenets of feature design we employ on the Interfolio Software Development Team is iterative development. When we create something for our users, we like to gather feedback and data, and then take a second crack at our idea (or sometimes even a third). This particular attitude towards feature development is part of an overall software development philosophy known as Agile Development. We put this attitude into practice with our newest ByCommittee Promotion & Tenure templates feature.
Our goal at Interfolio is to remove complications and friction points for users by providing a seamless workflow that is simple to start, conduct, and finish. We learned that one of the most difficult parts of conducting a committee-based review was the organization and coordination involved in starting the whole process. With ByCommittee P&T, administrators now have the ability to set up case templates to act as starting points from which they can begin the formal process for an individual candidate in the future. ByCommittee users set up case templates just like they would individual cases: templates contain much of the same information as a normal case, including material requirements and custom workflow features.
One issue we ran into early in development was that the process of creating a template was not distinct enough from creating a case. Our solution was to have the template creation look like a distinct workflow. After rigorous testing and analysis of user feedback, we decided that the second implementation was still a bit clunky. There was no easy way to manage case templates, and the language used in the feature was still a bit off. So, we took another pass at it. We went back and adjusted how users enter and exit the workflow, made significant revisions to the language that the user sees, and gave users a dedicated place to manage their list of case templates. Then, after more testing, we released the revised feature to our users.
So, while the first version of the templates feature didn’t quite meet our expectations of a finished product, we didn’t stop there. We set out to give users a way to plan out the logistics of conducting future promotion and tenure reviews, and we iterated on the work until the end product was a fully polished feature that will hopefully make our users lives a bit easier!
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
Many faculty leaders at institutions around the country believe that tenure shields incompetent professors from dismissal, according to a study published earlier this year.
John M. Rothgeb, Jr., a professor of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, undertook the study in response to statewide debates about the effectiveness of tenure in ensuring faculty quality. The study, “When Tenure Protects the Incompetent: Results from a Survey of Department Chairs,” was published in the January issue of Political Science & Politics (PSP). The results of the study were covered in January by Inside Higher Ed.
Rothgeb collected surveys from 361 political science department chairs at institutes granting doctoral, masters and baccalaureate degrees. The surveys asked the department chairs whether tenure “has shielded incompetent faculty from dismissal,” and 62 percent responded that it had.
“Whether large, medium or small, unionized or non-unionized, rural or urban, or public or private, department chairs report that their colleges and universities confront problems stemming from tenure as a protector of the incompetent,” Rogthgeb wrote in the PSP article.
The survey also asked a number of other questions to try to determine what institutional factors may lead to tenure protecting poorly performing faculty. Rothgeb’s statistical analysis of the survey data found that three key factors — administration overriding faculty recommendations for tenure; institutions using collegiality as a criterion for tenure; and emphasizing “quantity” over “quality” in academic publishing in faculty evaluation — were all linked to a higher likelihood of reported faculty incompetence.
An abstract of Rothgeb’s study, as well as a link to purchase the article from PSP, is available here: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract
Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of the study, which includes interviews with Rothgeb and other university faculty responding to his findings, is available here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/07/study-links-tenure-criteria-long-term-professor-performance
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
The traditional system of evaluating faculty candidates for tenure is outdated and subject to numerous biases, according to an essay by KerryAnn O’Meara. The essay suggests that the tenure evaluation system be expanded to include more diverse groups of reviewers and new kinds of scholarly contributions.
O’Meara is associate professor of higher education at the University of Maryland at College Park, and has spent 15 years studying academic reward systems. Her suggestions are based on studying findings and reports by several other researchers and organizations. The essay was published in the January 13, 2014 edition of Inside Higher Ed.
The essay argues that tenure evaluation systems set up in the mid-20th century are out of date, and that relying on traditional criteria creates a bias against some members of today’s more diverse college faculties.
“Academic reward systems should ensure that faculty making excellent contributions to scholarship, teaching, and service should be retained and advanced,” O’Meara writes. “Yet what excellence looks like in 2013 may differ from what it looked like in 1960 and 50 years from now.”
O’Meara presents three primary critiques of the traditional system: that it is biased in favor of white men; that it fails to recognize the legitimacy of newer forms of scholarship; and that choosing external evaluators from only prestigious institutions contributes to a cycle of bias against diverse candidates and new scholarship.
The essay goes on to offer numerous ways to remedy these issues. O’Meara suggests that promotion and tenure committee members be trained on the hidden biases in the traditional system. She argues that the criteria for scholarly contributions should be widened to include things such as digital media, community engagement and activism, and that institutions choose from a more diverse range of outside evaluators when making tenure decisions.
The full essay is available here: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2014/01/13/essay-calls-reform-tenure-and-promotion-system#sthash.X7qbskqV.5OxY7Sdv.dpbs
Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.
