No abstract

For many years student ratings have been used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various courses and the teaching abilities of the instructors involved. Investigators have either supported or attacked the validity of this assessment procedure on the basis of the direction and degree of the relationship found between student rating of a course and student achievement in that course. This validation study supplemented correlation analysis with analysis of variance to compare groups at various achievement levels and to control for the possible confounding effects of overall group analysis. Medical students responded to a Likert attitude scale about aspects of an anatomy course. The mean attitude scores for a high and a low course achievement group were significantly different at the 0.005 level; the high achievement group had a more positive course attitude.

No abstract

Student ratings of course effectiveness are frequently administered on the day of the final examination, a time that assures the greatest return. The present investigation was designed to study whether such ratings, given immediately after the final, would be biased by the presence of unfair questions on that examination. Two equivalent student groups in afreshman medical gross anatomy course took different versions of the final examination, one designed to be fair (F) and the other unfair (U). Students then rated the examination, course, and instructors. The F version was rated more favorably than the U version, but ratings of the course and instructors were equivalent between groups. These data indicate that ratings of course and instructor characteristics that are unrelated to testing remain unbiased by an examination designed to be and recognized as unfair. Data also show that a total rating score may be reduced significantly if a substantial number of rating items pertain to that examination. I