The purpose of this study was to show that the present Student Evaluation of Seminary (SES) provides the seminary teacher with an inadequate estimate of his credibility in the classroom, as perceived by his students. To accomplish this goal, a list of student responses to questions about their seminary teachers was developed and analyzed. The results indicated that not all factors of teacher credibility as perceived by the seminary students were being measured by the SES.Thirty-one students gave a total of 339 responses to the questions asked by the researcher. A comparison of the student statements to statements in the SES showed that 50 percent of the students statements were not discussed in the SES. The student statements were divided into the categories discovered in the research literature, with the added category, "Spirituality," These categories were compared to the categories used in the SES. A 37 percent similarity was found.Further research is recommended to develop a revised SES that would provide the seminary teacher with a more adquate evaluation of his credibility in the classroom, as perceived by his students.

The purposes of this study were to: (a) determine, for General Education Program (GEP) courses, what individual items on the student form are predictive of the overall instructor rating value; (b) investigate the relationship of instructional mode, class size, GEP foundational area, and GEP theme with the overall instructor rating value; (c) examine what teacher/course qualities are related to a high (Excellent) overall evaluation or a low (Poor) overall evaluation value. The data set used for analysis contained sixteen student response scores (Q1-Q16), response number, class size, term, foundational area (communication, cultural/historical, mathematics, social, or science), GEP theme (yes/no), instructional mode (face-to-face or other), and percent responding (calculated value). All identifying information such as department, course, section, and instructor was removed from the analysis file. The final data set contained 23 variables, 8,065 course sections, and 294,692 student responses. All individual items on the student evaluation form were related to the overall evaluation item score, measured using Spearman's correlation coefficients. None of the examined course variables were selected as significant when the individual form items were included in the modeling process. This indicated students employed a consistent approach to the evaluation process regardless of large or small classes, face-to-face or other instructional modes, foundational area, or percent responding differences. Data mining modeling techniques were used to understand the relationship of individual item responses and additional course information variables to the overall score. Items one to fifteen (Q1 to Q15), class size, instructional mode, foundational area, and GEP theme were the independent variables used to find splits to create homogenous groups in relation to the overall evaluation score. The model results are presented in terms of if-then rules for 'Excellent' or 'Poor' overall evaluation scores. The top three rules for 'Excellent' or 'Poor' based their classifications on some combination of the following items: communication of ideas and information; facilitation of learning; respect and concern for students; instructor's overall organization of the course; instructor's interest in your learning; instructor's assessment of your progress in the course; and stimulation of interest in the course. Proportion of student responses conforming to the top three rules for 'Excellent' or 'Poor' overall evaluation ranged from 0.89 to .60. These findings suggest that students reward, with higher evaluation scores, instructors who they perceive as organized and strive to clearly communicate course content. These characteristics can be improved through mentoring or professional development workshops for instructors. Additionally, instructors of GEP courses need to be informed that students connect respect and concern and having an interest in student learning with the overall score they give the instructor.

No description available.

The relationship between students' and instructors' personality types and the students' ratings of their instructors was investigated using data obtained from the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) for personality types and the Student Perception of Instruction (SPI) scale for students' ratings. Thirteen instructors and 464 students from two community colleges participated. The data were analyzed by the Johnson Max cluster analysis, multivariate analysis, and one-way analysis of variance procedures. The following questions were investigated: (1) When students are clustered according to the homogeneity of their ratings across the first six items on the SPI, how many groups will emerge in a class? (2) Will these cluster groups represent a predominance of student raters with matching personality types? (3) When ratings in the 13 classes are examined separately, will students with matched personality types have similar ratings on the six items on the SPI? (4) When students and instructors are grouped according to their personality types, to what degree will the interaction of personality types of students and instructors influence the ratings on the seven items of the SPI? and (5) To what extent are ratings on the "Overall Rating of the Instructor" item related to the level of congruence of student's/instructor's personality types? The results were the following: Sixty-five percent of the students clustered into groups in the 13 classes; however, there was no evidence that personality type was the basis on which clusters were formed. In only one of the 13 classes did students with matched personality types have similar ratings on any of the rating items. It was concluded that this class was not a representative sample of the groups. When data were grouped for question four, statistically significant interactions occurred between Realistic students and Investigative instructors on five of the seven rating items; however, these interactions did not support Holland's assumptions that students would respond more positively to instructors who had personality types similar to the students'. Finally, although the fifth analyses yielded statistically significant interactions, again these were not in the direction expected and did not support Holland's assumption of personality/environment congruence and satisfaction. / Ed. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Performance appraisal ratings provide the basis for numerous employment decisions, including retention, promotion, and salary increases. Thus, understanding the factors affecting the accuracy of these ratings is important to organizations and employees. Leniency, one rater error, is a tendency to assign higher ratings in appraisal than is warranted by actual performance. The proposed study examined how personality factors Agreeableness and Conscientiousness relate to rater leniency. The ability of narrower facets of personality to account for more variance in rater leniency than will the broad factors was also examined. The study used undergraduates' (n = 226) evaluations of instructor performance to test the study's hypotheses. In addition to personality variables, students' social desirability tendency and attitudes toward instructor were predicted to be related to rater leniency. Partial support for the study's hypotheses were found. The Agreeableness factor and three of the corresponding facets (Trust, Altruism and Tender-Mindedness) were positively related to rater leniency as predicted. The hypotheses that the Conscientiousness factor and three of the corresponding facets (Order, Dutifulness, and Deliberation) would be negatively related to rater leniency were not supported. In the current sample the single narrow facet Altruism accounted for more variance in rater leniency than the broad Agreeableness factor. While social desirability did not account for a significant amount of variance in rater leniency, attitude toward instructor was found to have a significant positive relationship accounting for the largest amount of variance in rater leniency.

The purpose of this study was to determine if leniency and halo error in student ratings could be reduced by training the student raters and by using a Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) rather than a Likert scale. Two hypotheses were proposed. First, the ratings collected from the trained raters would contain less halo and leniency error than those collected from the untrained raters. Second, within the group of trained raters the BARS would contain less halo and leniency error than the Likert instrument.

Research shows that there is a disconnect between student and faculty perceptions in a range of areas. One area that has not been researched is comparing student and faculty perceptions regarding desirable and undesirable traits in professors. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify what students perceive are the most and least desirable qualities in professors, and how those qualities affect their overall college experience. This study also identified what professors thought students perceive as the most and least desirable qualities in professors, and how those qualities affect students’ overall college experience. The findings indicate that the largest disparity in perceptions between students and faculty was faculty perception that students rate them based on class rigor and assigned grades, which were two of the least important qualities according to students. The largest similarity that faculty and students agreed upon is that students desire professors who are knowledgeable, passionate, engaging, and able to connect with students. Both groups also perceive that students do not like professors who are boring and monotone. In addition, students and professors agree that students perceive professors as playing an important role in their lives that affect their ability to learn, the grades they receive, and also impact their overall college experience and trajectory in life. The two groups differed when describing how professors’ undesirable qualities can negatively affect students’ emotions and self-confidence. Faculty and students were in agreement in a variety of areas, but they were disconnected in several areas as well. This is a problem as we move into the future. Cox (2009) said, “the traditional college student is no longer the typical college student” (p. 7), especially when it comes to state and community colleges. Professors would benefit from listening to students instead of assuming that their ratings are untrustworthy and based on how hard or easy the class was or what grade they received. The researcher asserts, along with others in the literature, that expertise in content area is no longer good enough to be an effective educator in higher education. Faculty also need to be experts in understanding students. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in online student perception of the quality of instruction between online instructors who did and did not complete faculty training for online instruction. There has been very little research identifying the factors influencing online students perception on quality of instruction, specifically at Florida public institutions. This research is important in establishing if public universities should require some level of training before an instructor can teach online. Experiencing poor quality of instruction can negatively impact an online student academically, which can, in turn, be detrimental to a university’s student retention and graduation rates. This study adds to the current body of research regarding improvement of the quality of instruction in online courses based on the online students perception of faculty and the completion of faculty training for online instruction. The results of this study demonstrated no significant difference overall in student perception of quality of instruction between online instructors who did and did not complete faculty training as measured in courses with five or more student respondents. Additional results revealed that multiple academic colleges demonstrated a significant difference in student perception of quality of instruction. This study also discovered a slight negative effect of online faculty training on other areas of student satisfaction that did not include quality of instruction. Recommendations for future research are provided, including those for the improvement of online faculty training, university policy, and faculty and student preparation for online teaching and learning, respectively. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Studien är en kvalitativ intervjuundersökning av fem förskolepedagogers uppfattningar av möjligheter och svårigheter att genomföra pedagogisk kartläggning kring barn med funktionsnedsättningar i förskolan. Barnen i barngrupperna är mellan ett och fem år. Ett eller flera barn har någon funktionsnedsättning. Två kommuner från södra Sverige är representerade.   Viktigt för studien har varit att studera arbetet med kartläggningen i ett helhetsperspektiv. Studiens teoretiska, utvecklingsekologiska, perspektiv ger möjlighet att uppfatta faktorer i barnets närmiljö men också i andra miljöstrukturer på samhällsnivå.   Resultatet presenteras i temana; observation, reflektion, samverkan och fortbildning. Innehållet i kartläggningen utgörs av barnens motorik, kommunikation, motivation, beteenden, samspel och relationer med såväl barn som vuxna samt hur planerade stödinsatser fungerar i verksamheten.   I pedagogernas kartläggningsarbete ingår förutom barnen; kollegor i arbetslaget, interna specialpedagoger, föräldrar, barnhabilitering och till viss del BVC. I fortbildningen ingår interna och externa aktörer. Olika specialpedagogiska perspektiv uttrycks i förhållande till barnen med funktionsnedsättningar.   Som förutsättningar för den pedagogiska kartläggningen fungerar de möjligheter och svårigheter som pedagogerna beskriver. Det är relationer, barngruppens storlek, medvetenhet kring olika roller, befintliga kartläggningsverktyg, tid för reflektion och utveckling av observationsmetoder, stabila arbetslag, gemensam fortbildning samt en organisering av samverkan mellan olika verksamheter.