Student Ratings of College Teaching: Reliability, Validity, and Usefulness

Within each of three Liberal Arts curriculum areas, this study examined intercorrelations among college instructors' self ratings and, in addition, various correlates of those ratings. Item pairs that correlated substantiallywere: "clear" and "approachable," "got students interested" and "how much students learned," and "clear" and "overall teaching ability." Linear composites of specific self ratings significantly predicted general self ratings, and linear composites of instructor characteristics predicted both specific and general self ratings, but the multiple correlations were low. The only instructor characteristics that related substantially to self ratings in all curriculum areas were motivation-related, i.e., their own enjoyment of teaching and liking for the subject matter seem to play an important part in instructors 1 definitions of good teaching and good learning.Among measures that might be used in the evaluation of college teaching are student ratings, peer ratings, and self ratings. A substantial and growing body of literature exists on student ratings (See reviews by Costin, Greenough, & Menges, 1971; and Doyle, 1975), but relatively little research has so far been published on peer or self ratings. Centra (1973) found peer ratings less reliable and more lenient than student ratings (Note 1) and self ratings sometimes lower than, sometimes the same as, but usually higher than student ratings. In the latter study he also noted a good deal of similarity (rank correlation of .77) in the way students and instructors rank ordered items, which suggests that instructors tend to be quite aware of their own relative strengths and weaknesses. Finally, he noted a curriculum effect, in which different patterns of self vs. student discrepancies occurred across broad subject-matter areas.Research on college instructors' self ratings, then, seems to have dealt almost exclusively with the comparison of self ratings to student ratings. No study could be located that looked for factors that define, correlate with, or predict self ratings. Because self evaluation is an important part of instructional diagnosis

supporting

confidence: 69%

Self Ratings of College Instruction

Doyle

Webber

1978

“…However, the present results augment a growing body of research findings (Aleamoni, 1974;Costin, Greenough, & Menges, 1971;Menges, 1973) which show that on balance student judgments are relatively free of the many biases frequently attributed to them.…”

Section: Bias In Student Judgmentsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Recent reviews of these issues (e.g., Aleamoni, 1974;Costin, Greenough, & Menges, 1971;Menges, 1973) conclude that empirical studies generally indicate that student ratings are reliable, valid, and unaffected by such extraneous variables as class size, sex of student, time of the class, level of the course, and whether students are majors or non-majors in the subject area. Two objections to student ratings, however, which have received little empirical attention are: (a) student ratings are contaminated by the students' personality traits; (b) student ratings are little more than popularity contests in which the personally attractive instructor is favored over the less colorful, but equally hard working one.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Student as Consumer of the Teaching Process

Grush¹,

Costin²

1975

Self Cite

College students in social-behavioral science courses described their personality traits, their teachers’ traits, dimensions of classroom behavior, and their attraction to their instructors (graduate teaching assistants) “as persons” and “as teachers.” Correlational analyses showed that teacher skill was not related to students’ self-perceived personality traits or their attraction to teachers “as persons,” but was correlated positively with certain teacher personality traits and attraction to instructors “as teachers.” Regression analyses further identified those teacher traits (ascendancy, personal relations, vigor) and classroom behaviors (teacher control, absence of negative affect) most important for effective teaching. It was concluded that college students are objective consumers of the teaching process and their judgments should be solicited to identify variables important for teacher effectiveness.

“…The extent to which teaching assistants are included as subjects in teaching evaluation studies can be estimated by an analysis of the Costin, Greenough, and Menges (1971) literature review of the area. Of the 78 articles listed in the reference section which pertain to research on student ratings of college teaching, 14% based their conclusions on data collected solely from teaching assistants.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Student Ratings of Teaching Assistants and Faculty Members

Nevill¹,

Ware²,

Smith³

1978

Seven hundred and ninety-nine students in 36 sections of undergraduate analytic geometry and calculus completed an achievement test in both pre and post conditions and an instructor rating instrument in the post condition. Nineteen of the sections were taught by sixteen teaching assistants and seventeen classes by sixteen full-time faculty members. The data were analyzed separately for teaching assistants and full-time faculty. Students rated teaching assistants and faculty members in a similar fashion, both in terms of the level of ratings and the conceptu/il framework within which these judgments were made.Considerable attention has been and is being given to the improvement of college teaching and to the use of student ratings as a gauge of teaching effectiveness. A critical issue in discussing the research has been the widespread use of teaching assistants, both because of the presumed poor quality of their teaching (Costin, 1968) and because of their use in key experiments in teacher evaluation (Frey, 1973;Gessner, 1973;Rodin & Rodin, 1972). In addition, there is ample evidence (Gage, 1961;Rayder, 1968;Walker, 1968) to suggest that related variables such as age, rank, experience, and degree are related to student evaluation of teaching. The thrust of this article will be a comparison of the way teaching assistants and full-time faculty are rated by students, not only Requests for reprints should be sent to Dorothy D. Nevill,