An Empirical Investigation of Student Evaluations of Instruction—The Relative Importance of Factors

Abstract

We analyzed over 100,000 student evaluations of instruction over four years in the college of business at a major public university. We found that the original instrument that was validated about 20 years ago is still valid, with factor analysis showing that the six underlying dimensions used in the instrument remained relatively intact. Also, we found that the relative importance of those six factors in the overall assessment of instruction changed over the past two decades, reflecting changes in the expectations of the current millennial generation of students. The results were consistent across four subgroups studied -Undergraduate Core, Undergraduate Non-Core, Graduate Core and Graduate Non-Core classes, with minor differences. Student Motivation (the instructor's ability to motivate students) and grading/assignments (fairness and objectivity of grading practices) have superseded presentation ability in relative importance as indicators of overall teaching effectiveness. Our study has implications for teachers in terms of the appropriate areas to focus on for improving their teaching practices.

Norming of Student Evaluations of Instruction: Impact of Noninstructional Factors

“…Brightman (2005) points out, in order to effectively use SEIs for assessment, the instrument must first be valid. The validity of the instrument used at the College of Business of this large public university was established by Brightman et al (1989) and the instrument was revalidated in recent times by Nargundkar and Shrikhande (2012). Furthermore, the results of the SEIs should be appropriately normed for fair feedback to faculty.…”

“Somebody has to teach the ‘broccoli’ course”: Administrators Navigating Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET)

“…Although SET validity and reliability have been frequently disputed, some authors state that these are valid tools to evaluate teaching (Grammatikopoulos, Linardakis, Gregoriadis, & Oikonomidis, 2014;Khong, 2014), and in some cases remain valid tools years after their initial implementation (Nargundkar & Shrikhande, 2012). Though assessing an instrument's validity is a continuous process, some researchers have indicated that SET have good overall reliability and validity with relatively few biases (Socha, 2013;Wright & Jenkins-Guarnieri, 2012).…”

IRRODL Volume 15, Number 4

“…On the contrary, some other factors are not easily influenced and managed, such as student self-motivation, student learning style, required/elective courses ratio, and so forth. Rating teachers should be a valuable procedure for students as well, because it can lead to improvement of teaching quality, based on the stated opinions of the students (Marzano, 2012;Nargundkar & Shrikhande, 2012). The study of Taylor and Tyler (2012) strongly confirms the opinion that teachers develop skills and otherwise improve due to student evaluation.…”

“…Some previous studies have dealt with the issue of whether and to what extent the evaluation results truly reflect students' attitudes. According to most authors, teacher rating proved to be a good indicator of teaching effectiveness (e.g., Beran & Violato, 2005;Nargundkar & Shrikhande, 2012;Wiers-Jenssen, Stensaker, & Grogaard, 2003). Beran and Violato (2005) also found that teacher rating is, to a lesser extent, biased by some factors that are not related to the teachers themselves, such as students' grade expectations, attendance, and types of courses being evaluated.…”