CATS Student Survey

Description and Rationale

CATS short-form was developed to help improve student engagement and completion of end of course surveys by making feedback quicker and easier to provide to faculty.  This seven-item checklist provides students an opportunity to rate the excellence of course and instructor, as well as to report their ratings on instructor ability to model the skills and competencies associated with the University’s graduation competencies. 

Introduced for the Fall 2024 semester, CATS short-form consists of the following:

CATS is administered to students in all course formats (F2F, OL, HYB) during the last two weeks of classes.

CATS (Course and Teaching Survey) by Wilmington University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Encouraging Student Participation & Student Access to CATS Surveys

Best Practices in Increasing Student Response Rates. This resource provides strategies for increasing student buy-in and participation in survey completion.

Students can complete the CATS survey during the last two weeks of each course.  Students have two ways to access their CATS surveys:

• Via their WilmU Email Address: A unique link is sent to students via email at the start of the survey period (2 weeks prior to the end of the course), with reminders provided to non-respondents every three days throughout.
  • Link delivered from coursesurvey@wilmu.edu
  • Addressed to student name, provided by CTE
  • Informs students of survey due date

• Via Canvas: The Student Course Evaluations tab will appear on the course menu bar the first day of week six for blocks and week thirteen for semester courses. Upon clicking this menu bar item, students will see:
  • Pending course surveys appear at the top of the screen, highlighted in blue.
  • Completed course surveys appear at the bottom of the screen, highlighted in gray.

Resources for Faculty

• CATS Access- Access to CATS reports is provided via email. This email is sent from coursesurvey@wilmu.edu at the end of every block and semester. Please email coursesurvey@wilmu.edu if you need this email resent. The link to CATS data is unique to your user account and should not be shared with others.
• Reporting Features Available for All Faculty:
  • Response Rate Tracker- Provides faculty with an opportunity to monitor student participation during survey collection periods.
  • Project Results-Provides an opportunity to review your CATS results by terms and course.
  • Report Builder-Allows faculty to view item-specific results over time or by course.
  • Results Feedback- Faculty can use this tool to discuss their results directly with their program chair.
• CATS Faculty Guide: This resource provides faculty with institutional averages for each survey item as well as a pairing of CATS items with their related Pathways to Instructional Excellence workshops. Faculty may schedule a confidential review of their CATS feedback and suggested actions by emailing facultydevelopment@wilmu.edu.

Development of CATS (Original-2018)

The development of CATS was truly a collaborative process, involving input from the CTE, Wilmington University’s Academic Leadership, Program Chairs, and Adjunct Faculty. CATS was validated via a seven-step survey construction process endorsed by educational researchers (Artino, La Rochelle, Dezee & Gehlbach, 2014):

• Step #1: Conduct literature review: To increase survey relevance and identify instructional best-practices associated with the teaching of adult learners, teaching accelerated courses, teaching in an open-enrollment environment and teaching in a scholar-practitioner model a review of relevant educational research was completed.
• Step #2: Conduct interviews and focus groups. Academic program chair interviews and focus groups further clarified the relevancy of specific student feedback as it relates to teaching performance. In addition, Wilmington University’s adjunct faculty were surveyed on the feedback they deem valuable and relevant to their teaching performance.
• Step #3: Synthesize the literature review and focus groups. Faculty and Program Chair feedback provided a blueprint for CTE’s first draft of the CATS survey.
• Step #4. Develop items.  CATS items were designed to measure the relevant aspects of teaching effectiveness identified in the literature review and further revised to include focus group and faculty survey feedback. CATS includes 20 Likert scaled items and 2 qualitative items. The draft of CATS was presented to Wilmington University’s Academic Council for their approval.
• Step #5: Conduct expert validation: Wilmington University’s CTE and Excelsior College’s Institutional Outcomes Department collaborated to edit CATS for clarity prior to pilot testing.
• Step #6: Conduct cognitive interviews: Student participants were interviewed t to ensure that CATS items are interpreted in the intended manner.
• Step #7: Conduct pilot testing. The CATS survey pilot took place during the spring and summer 2018 semesters.

This rigorous validation process ensures a valid, reliable means of collecting student feedback on teaching effectiveness is in place. Based on the flexible, student-centered focus of our institutional values CATS measures the unique and innovative ways Wilmington University defines teaching effectiveness.

Reference: Artino, A. R. J., La, R. J. S., Dezee, K. J., & Gehlbach, H. (2014). Developing questionnaires for educational research: amee guide no. 87. Medical Teacher, 36(6), 463–74. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/0142159X.2014.889814.