Bridging the Gap Between Faculty Activity and the Student Experience

Faculty activity and student experience data empower Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to not only see the complete story but to improve the quality and effectiveness of the education they offer. Yet, most HEIs rely on separate systems to collect and manage these most crucial information – one system for managing faculty activity reporting, and one for managing student experience data. That’s two separate systems handling core data from teaching, learning, services, research, grants, and other activities.

The gap between these two systems means that a piece of the story that faculty needs to inform their teaching is missing – the student voice.

Bridging the gap with Blue + Interfolio Activity Reporting

This is where the partnership between Interfolio Activity Reporting and Blue course evaluations changes everything by giving faculty the teaching and learning information they need all in one place.

• Blue Course Evaluations, a solution in the Blue Experience Management Platform, allows institutions to automate their student feedback gathering processes fully, and gives flexibility, personalization, and control with even the most complex course evaluations (cross-listed, team-taught, etc.)
• Interfolio Activity Reporting, a module in the Interfolio Faculty Information System, centralizes all scholarly activity – teaching, research, service, and community work – into a single platform.

This unparalleled meeting of two great systems provides faculty and institutional leaders with Blue course evaluation data and rich analytics within Interfolio Activity Reporting.

How will higher education institutions benefit?

1. Capture the student voice and compile them into insights: Student satisfaction is fundamental to the future of Higher Education, and course evaluations play a strategically important role in the student voice. As improving the quality of teacher instruction continues to be a focus for educational leaders, they will now have a holistic view of the teaching story by accessing Blue course evaluation and student survey data within Interfolio Activity Reporting.
2. Ensure the optimal journey for students and faculty: Faculty will have a full view of their teaching story along with everything they need to improve and understand the student experience all within one application. Students will have more engaged instructors and access to better teaching, which will positively impact first-year retention, student engagement, and graduation.
3. Leverage rich analytics and course evaluation data: Blue reports and fact-based decision-making analytics can be accessed from within the Interfolio Activity Reporting environment. This includes both quantitative and qualitative student feedback data, adding greater value to the feedback collected from student evaluations and surveys. 
4. Make longitudinal student feedback data transparent to faculty: Course evaluation data often influence tenure, promotion, and salary decisions. By allowing faculty to view their ratings over time, they can get valuable insights into their teaching. They can choose to submit these reports along with their other activities and accomplishments during the review process.
5. Improved data + increased efficiency: This integration will fundamentally change how evaluations are leveraged by individual faculty and their institution to determine impact. That means administrators don’t have to waste time importing data from another system because it’s already there. Faculty can also select optional questions for course evaluations that align with their teaching goals within the Interfolio environment, and launch midterm reviews from one place.
6. Tap into live formative feedback via Bluepulse – an engagement network. Part of the Blue Experience Management Platform, Bluepulse is an always-on two-way communication channel between students and faculty, where questions, thoughts, ideas, and information can be shared at any time. Bluepulse helps support teaching and learning strategies by enabling faculty to get the insights they need to make impactful changes when it matters most – during the semester.