SFSU Faculty Survey
Best Practices
Laurie L. Meschke, PhD
ACCESS Assessment Coordinator
San Francisco State University
Acknowledgements
 Gene Chelberg, Asst VP for Student
Affairs & Director of the DPRC
 Geoff Brown, ACCESS Project Manager,
DPRC
 Instructional Materials workgroup
members
 Charles O’Sullivan of BSS IT department
 Faculty respondents
 SFSU Bookstore, Carmelina la Petite, Café
Rosso, and the Vista Room
Assessment Objectives
 Exposure and attitudes re: students with




disabilities
Timely adoption of textbooks and readers
LMS
Digital or multimedia instructional materials
Training received and desired
Faculty Survey Basics
 First administered in Spring 2008 (n=59)
 Second round of survey September 24 to October
24, 2008
 Approximately 300 randomly selected faculty
 Answers are anonymous
 Surveys must be completed in one setting to
maintain anonymity
Faculty Survey Basics
 Technology
 XHTML forms dynamically generated using PHP (v 5.2)
 Served using the Apache web server
 Data stored in PostgreSQL database
 System platforms
 Red Hat Enterprise Linus
 PostgreSQL
 Apache HTTP server
 PHP
Faculty Survey Basics



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Form is generated
Form sent to browser when user reaches form page
User completes and submits form
Data validated using PHP
 Not validated – form sent back to user with message
 Validated – data processed and stored in database
 Cost to date: $5,992
 $700 (Web work)
 $5,292 (Consultant work)
SFSU Nuances
FACTORS
 Busy faculty
 Much autonomy
 Many non-tenure
track faculty or
lecturers
STRATEGIES
 Three personalized email
reminders
 Campus Memo
 Phone bank
 Tiny url:
http://tinyurl.com/3sntku
 Incentives
Alternatives
 Qualitative interviews with select
faculty
 Survey to ALL faculty
Challenges
 Length of survey
 Competing with faculty schedules
 Anonymity
 Complete survey in one setting
 Reminders need to go to all faculty
Scalability
 Survey software limited only by scalability of the
platform
 Linus-Apache-Postgre-PHP solution is fairly
robust; can be scaled further with extra hardware
Unanticipated Benefits
 Unexpected findings
 75% of faculty had used at text; over half had
ordered on time
 Less than 10% had had accessibility training
 Accessible audiovideo material used by 12 of 31
faculty
 Fewer than 20% of faculty who share particular file
types in course knew how to assess accessibility
 PDF, word, web site, PPT, and discussion forums most
common
Modifications
 Current
 Added more dropdown menu options to
reduce write-ins
 Future
 Shorten


Delete some technologies
Specific annual focus
 Open to all faculty or greater randomly
selected group
Opening Page of Survey
First Page of Survey
Field turns pink to
indicate as
necessary and
skipped
Drop down menus to
ease completion
Required fields
indicated as such
Contact
Laurie L. Meschke
Ph: 415.405.3705
Email: [email protected]
Geoff Brown
Ph: 415.338.2377
Email: [email protected]