Research in Higher Education

, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp 235–249 | Cite as

Determinants of teaching quality: What's important to students?

  • Josef M. Broder
  • Jeffrey H. Dorfman
Article
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Abstract

A method for using student evaluations to help faculty improve their teaching performance is presented. A survey of current methods of student evaluations of teaching identified a need to improve the statistical information obtained from these evaluations. An ordinary least squares framework is used to identify the factors that students feel are important in teacher and course ratings. This framework is used to estimate weights that students assign to various teacher and course attributes and to test whether students apply these weights consistently across teachers and courses. About 81 percent of the explained variation in teacher ratings was associated with attributes that contribute to student enjoyment of the learning process. Over 90 percent of the explained variation in course ratings was associated with attributes that measure how much a student learned in the course. Students were found to apply these attributes or weights consistently across teachers and courses. Implications for developing effective teaching strategies, faculty recruitment, and curriculum reform are discussed.

Keywords

Instructor Rating Teaching Quality Student Evaluation Teaching Performance Teaching Evaluation 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Human Sciences Press, Inc 1994

Authors and Affiliations

  • Josef M. Broder
    • 1
  • Jeffrey H. Dorfman
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Agricultural and Applied EconomicsUniversity of GeorgiaAthens

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