Non‐instructional correlates of student ratings: a brief review

Abstract

In many countries, the social pressure for public accountability and an increased awareness of the issues of 'consumerism' have touched even the hallowed halls of higher education, resulting in a greater emphasis on the systematic evaluation of classroom instruction. Although this movement affects people differently at different levels of academia, its results are pervasive. For example, the movement has been accompanied by (1) increasing pressure on, and from, administrators to ensure that evaluation procedures are utilized within their schools or units (sometimes without a full understanding of the basic issues involved in performance evaluation), (2) increasing apprehension on the part of faculty members concerning reliability, validity, and general applicability of these procedures (often without much appreciation for the relationships between student ratings and faculty performance), and (3) an increasing amount of research designed t o evaluate the various faculty evaluation procedures (such research has contributed considerably to our understanding of the issues of evaluation, but a great deal more work is needed). One of the primary components Based on a presentation made at the annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1976. Supported in part by funds from the Office of the Dean, School of Sciences and Health Professions, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. The assistance of Mr. W. E. Adkins is gratefully acknowledged.

Evaluating courses: an examination of the impact of student gender

“…For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Research by Morgan and Ogden (1981) highlighted the gender of the students as one of a number of variables which need to be taken into account when evaluating courses. More recently Feldman (1993) in a review of the literature identified 39 articles which investigated the relationship between gender and student evaluations.…”