Longitudinal Study of a “Student's Evaluation of Course” Including the Effects of a Professor's Life Experiences on Students' Evaluations

Abstract

Issues of import to students' evaluations include accountability, improvement of teaching, anonymity, meaning and motivation of such evaluations, and validity and reliability. The very brief Student's Evaluation of Course, an entirely anonymous rating scale, is presented here for use only by the instructor, not for administrative purposes. Validity has been described previously. In this study, students' ratings of the six course-relevant items across a period of 35 years by one professor's students show that the ratings were affected by objectively determinable external events. Six specific hypotheses were set up and tested; five of these were borne out.

References

Allison

D. B.

Franklin

R. D.

Heshka

(1992) Reflections on visual inspection, response guided experimentation, and Type I error rate in single-case designs. Journal of Experimental Education, 61, 45–51.

Allport

G. W.

(1937) Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.

Barlow

D. H.

Hersen

(1984) Single case experimental designs: Strategies for studying behavior change. (2nd ed.) New York: Pergamon.

Bentler

P. M.

(1993) EQS: Structural equations program manual. Los Angeles, CA: BMDP Statistical Software, Inc.

Cates

W. M.

(1993) A small-scale comparison of paper-and-pencil and computerized versions of student end-of-course evaluations. Computers in Human Behavior, 9, 401–409.

Chassan

J. B.

(1979) Research design in clinical psychology and psychiatry. (2nd ed., revd. & enlgd.) New York: Halsted.

Collins

Horn

J. L.

(Eds.) (1991) Best methods for the analysis of change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Dreger

R. M.

(1953) A simple course evaluation scale. Journal of Experimental Education, 22, 145–153.

Dreger

R. M.

(1954) Further validational data on “A simple course evaluation scale.” Journal of Genetic Psychology, 85, 165–169.

10.

Dreger

R. M.

(1990) A research-oriented private psychological clinic: The potentiality and the actuality. Multivariate Experimental Clinical Research, 9, 131–143.

11.

Dreger

R. M.

(1993) Methodology. In Matson

J. L.

(Ed.), Handbook of hyperactivity in children. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 66–96.

12.

Dwinell

P. L.

Higbee

J. L.

(1993) Students' perceptions of the value of teaching evaluations. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 76, 995–1000.

13.

Fandt

P. M.

Stevens

G. E.

(1991) Evaluation bias in the business classroom: Evidence relating to the effects of previous experiences. Journal of Psychology, 125, 469–477.

14.

Gigliotti

R. J.

Buchtel

F. S.

(1990) Attributional bias and course evaluations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 341–351.

15.

Goldberg

G. F.

Callahan

J. P.

(1991) Comparative analyses of instructor ranking based on student evaluations. College Student Journal, 25, 198–200.

16.

Gordon

R. A.

Stuecher

(1992) The effect of anonymity and increased accountability on the linguistic complexity of teaching evaluations. Journal of Psychology, 126, 639–649.

17.

Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. (1966) Psychiatric research and the assessment of change. Vol. 6, Report No. 63. New York: Author.

18.

Guilford

J. P.

(1954) Psychometric methods. (2nd ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill.

19.

Harris

C. W.

(Ed.) (1963) Problems in measuring change. Madison, WI: Univer. of Wisconsin Press.

20.

Marlin

J. W.

Gaynor

P. E.

(1989) Do anticipated grades affect student evaluations? a discriminant analysis approach. College Student Journal, 23, 184–192.

21.

Marsh

H. W.

Hocevar

(1991) Students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness: The stability of mean ratings of the same teachers over a 13-year period. Teaching and Teacher Education, 7, 303–314.

22.

Neufeld

R. W. J.

(1972) Clinical quantitative methods. New York: Grune & Stratton.

23.

Nunnally

J. C.

Bernstein

I. H.

(1994) Psychometric theory. (3rd ed.) New York McGraw-Hill.

24.

Rosenthal

G. T.

Mathews

R. C.

Stout

L. J.

(1992) Some lessons learned about teaching via teleconference. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 115–120.

25.

Symonds

P. M.

(1924) On the loss of reliability in ratings due to coarseness of the scale. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 7, 456–461.

26.

Tatro

C. N.

(1995) Gender effects on student evaluations of faculty. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 28, 169–173.

27.

Tufte

E. R.

(1983) The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

28.

Watkins

Gerong

(1992) Evaluating undergraduate college teaching: A Filipino investigation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 52, 727–734.

29.

Watkins

Regmi

(1992) Student evaluations of tertiary teaching: A Nepalese investigation. Educational Psychology, 12, 131–142.