Student Course Evaluation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Inquiry into Faculty Perceptions

Author(s):

Gülçin Gülmez-Dağ(presenting / submitting)Yeşim Çapa-Aydın(presenting)Rahime Çobanoğlu

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 03 D,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

17:15-18:45

Room:

K5.19

Chair:

Contribution

Achieving excellence in teaching is tightly germane to high quality in higher education. In order to safeguard the quality of teaching activities at higher education institutions, particularly universities, a wide range of methods have so far been used. In the literature, student course evaluation appears as one of the most frequently consulted way of assessing the quality and effectiveness of teaching activities engaged by the university professors. This endeavor is enhanced through the administration of course evaluation questionnaires by end of each academic semester.

Its use dating back to as early as the 1920s (Cashin, 1989), consulting students’ perceptions to evaluate the courses is considered a cheap means for gathering and providing valuable information (Serdyukova, Tatum, & Serdyukov, 2010). In this approach to course evaluation, students who are in direct contact with the instructors for long hours are regarded to provide rich information about teaching; information that an external evaluator cannot offer (Aleamoni & Hexner, 1980). With their increased use in the 1980s, these evaluations serve many purposes including providing feedback to faculty members about the quality of their instruction, establishing criteria for the university administration to make decisions about faculty members, informing students about the effectiveness of the courses, establishing national and international quality standards on instruction, and allowing for research on the effectiveness of instruction (Marsh, 2007).

There, however, has been much debate on the validity and reliability of student evaluation of courses. Several studies stressed that a number of factors considered irrelevant to teacher effectiveness (e.g., elective/compulsory status, class size, difficulty level of the course, title of the instructor, students’ gender, and grade expectations) may potentially lead to bias in students’ judgments (Wachtel, 1998). Consistently, based on the belief that students are not enough equipped to make objective evaluations (Sojka, Gupta, & Deeter-Schmelz, 2002), faculty members appeared to be concerned especially about their use in summative decisions and also restrict the amount of change or improvement they make in their courses after the evaluation results (Nasser & Fresko, 2002).

The stance of faculty members on student course evaluation is considered critically important because they constitute the primary body of stakeholders influenced by the results of these evaluation. Yet, as a comprehensive and large-scale study (N=3490 students) on student course evaluations stressed, if this practice is to deliver its promises, effective use of the evaluation results by faculty members to improve their courses should be ensured (Cobanoglu & Capa-Aydin, 2013).

On the other hand, few studies appear to have thoroughly investigated the perceptions of faculty members in an in-depth manner and opened a way for their suggestions about the improvement of both student evaluations and the evaluation of their courses in the broader sense. This study, therefore, aimed at gathering faculty perspectives to determine the evaluation needs and improve university-wide instructional implementations. The results of this study are promising since they inform the very practice of student course evaluations. Yet, the findings can be of benefit for other European higher education institutions who intend to improve their course evaluation systems.

Method

This qualitative study employed the principles of a phenomenological research design. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted to delve into faculty members’ perceptions about student course evaluation in an in-depth fashion. Data sources to the study included 12 faculty members at a distinguished public university. In this university, student course evaluation is practiced in each semester toward the end of academic semester before final exams in online format and the results have an impact on the promotion of faculty members. In order to allow for the representation of different perspectives on course evaluation, maximum variation was sought in the selection of the sample. The variation was especially ensured for gender, tenure-track, and the faculty of employment. The semi-structured interview form has been developed by the researchers within the light of the literature. The questions aimed at gaining information about the faculty members’ thoughts broadly on course evaluation, and specifically on college students’ ability to make accurate evaluations about teaching effectiveness, importance of student course evaluation, the practice of student course evaluation in online environment, and the structure and content of the course evaluation form currently being implemented at the particular university. Sample questions of the interview form included “How do you perceive that your courses are evaluated by the students?”, “To what extent do you monitor your course evaluation results?”, and “What do you think about online vs. paper-pencil course evaluation?” The data gathered from these 12 interviews have been subjected to content analysis where common themes and sub-codes have been identified and handled in parallel with the research questions. Considering the suggestion of Lincoln and Guba (1985), we attempted to ensure the trustworthiness and transferability of our research primarily by member-checking during interviews, in-depth interviews, and analyst triangulation methods.

Expected Outcomes

Four major themes emerged from the perceptions of faculty members: (1) importance of student course evaluations, (2) utilization of the evaluation results, (3) accuracy of student evaluations and validity of the results, and (4) legitimacy of the use of evaluation results by the decision makers at the university. Results showed that the faculty members were in very much favor of course evaluations and advocate the necessity of being evaluated by the students to improve the quality of their instruction. However, although the evaluations were suggested to be of help, instructors’ negative beliefs on the accuracy and validity of the evaluations students make were seen to bring about a serious constraint: cautious, limited, or even no use of the results to revisit the teaching activity. One of the stated barriers beneath these beliefs is the extreme variation in students’ perceptions of the teaching quality: one student utterly praising the instruction while another severely criticizing it. This fact is suggested to confuse the faculty in making decisions about reorganizing their courses. Yet, faculty members were also observed to doubt the objectivity of students and their evaluations. Students were believed to relate the quality of teaching to the extent they are satisfied with the course rather than to how much they actually learned from the instruction; and their satisfaction level was stated to be easily and adversely influenced by the immensity workload, course difficulty, achievement level, amount of attendance to the course, and dissatisfaction with the grade obtained. Therefore, assessing the quality of teaching through student perceptions only and not employing other forms of evaluation (e.g. peer or portfolio evaluation) has frequently been stressed as a serious limitation. Thus, the use of results by the decision makers for summative decisions was considered to be improper unless the validity of the evaluations is ensured.

References

Aleamoni, L. M., & Hexner, P. Z. (1980). A review of the research on student evaluation and a report on the effect of different sets of instructions on student course and instructor evaluation. Instructional Science, 9, 67-84. Cobanoglu, R., & Capa Aydin, Y. (2013, August). Student evaluation of teaching: Perceptions of college students. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Munich. Cashin, W. E. (1989). Defining and evaluating college teaching. Idea Paper, no. 21. Manhattan, Kansas: Center for Faculty Evaluation and Faculty Development, Kansas State University. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Marsh, H. W. (2007). Students’ evaluations of university teaching: Dimensionality, reliability, validity, potential biases and usefulness. In R. P. Perry & J. C. Smart (Eds.), The scholarship of teaching and language in higher education: An evidence-based perspective (pp. 319-383). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Nasser, F., & Fresko, B. (2002). Faculty views of student evaluation of college teaching. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 27(2), 187-198. Serdyukova, N., Tatum, B. C., & Serdyukov, P. (2010). Student evaluations of courses and teachers. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching, 3, 180-190. Sojka, J., Gupta, A. K., & Deeter-Schmelz, D. R. (2002). Student and faculty perceptions of student evaluations of teaching. A study of similarities and differences. College Teaching, 50(2), 44-49. Wachtel, K. H. (1998). Student evaluation of college teaching effectiveness: A brief review. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 23(2), 191-211.

Author Information

Gülçin Gülmez-Dağ (presenting / submitting)

Middle East Technical University

Deparment of Educational Sciences

Ankara

Yeşim Çapa-Aydın (presenting)

Middle East Technical University, Turkey

Rahime Çobanoğlu