SHORT VS. LONG FORM

"Step 1. Decide on either the IDEA Long Form or the IDEA Short Form

With ICES there was only the Green Form. With the IDEA system you have the choice of either a Maroon-Long Form or a Red-Short Form. Generally,

• If your primary goal is to improve your teaching, use the diagnostic form (aka the "long form")
  • This form has 47 standard questions (you may choose to ask up to 19 additional questions)
  • This form includes 20 diagnostic questions that provide you with feedback on approaches to teaching and learning that are consistent with the most important learning objectives in your course. The IDEA website includes short papers about each of these questions with specific suggestions for how to improve instructional effectiveness in each area.
  • This form adjusts for 5 extraneous variables that are beyond the instructor’s control:
    1. Student motivation to take the class regardless of who taught it
    2. Student work habits
    3. Class size
    4. Student effort not attributable to the instructor
    5. Course difficulty not attributable to the instructor
• If you have other resources to help improve your teaching and you intend to use IDEA for administrative purposes only, OR if there are many nonstandard questions that you desire to ask, then use the short form
  • This form has 18 standard questions (you may choose to ask up to 20 additional questions)
  • This form adjusts for 3 extraneous variables that are beyond the instructor’s control:
    1. Student motivation to take the class regardless of who taught it
    2. Student work habits
    3. Class size
  • Certain class types, e.g., labs & discussion sections, may be best served with the short form because you can ask additional questions that are most applicable to instruction in these specialized settings, without risk of survey fatigue. If you desire to see lists of reliable questions designed for laboratory, discussion, or hybrid (online+classroom) courses, please send your request by email to idea@unm.edu.
• Both the short and long forms are pre-printed with standard questions. If you desire to ask additional questions, you will make those visible at the time of the student survey on a separate sheet of paper or projected on a classroom screen. Bubbles for responding to your multiple-choice survey additions, but not the actual text, are provided on both forms.