Open AccessThe Effects Of Different Sections And Students Pre-Course Interest On An Instructors Teaching Evaluations
Author(s) -
Obeua S. Persons
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of college teaching and learning/journal of college teaching and learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2157-894X
pISSN - 1544-0389
DOI - 10.19030/tlc.v4i3.1623
Subject(s) - promotion (chess) , psychology , affect (linguistics) , section (typography) , course (navigation) , mathematics education , teaching method , higher education , course evaluation , pedagogy , computer science , engineering , political science , communication , politics , law , aerospace engineering , operating system
This study has identified two important factors, unrelated to an instructor’s teaching ability, which can affect an instructor’s teaching evaluations. The first factor, which has never been examined in any prior studies, is the section effect. This study finds that teaching evaluations differ significantly across sections of the same course taught by the same instructor. This section effect cannot be explained by six student-related variables. The second factor, which is students’ pre-course interest measured at the beginning of a course, is found to be positively related to teaching evaluations. These findings suggest that higher-education administrators may want to consider the section effect and the students’ pre-course interest when they evaluate an instructor’s teaching effectiveness for promotion, tenure and merit decisions.