Declining enrollments and continuing tuition increases are having major impact on all universities. It is a commonly accepted fact that the quality of a university can be directly related to the quality of its faculty. With this assumption in mind, a university must then determine the best method for evaluating the teaching effectiveness of its faculty members. The study is an examination of certain student characteristics that might affect the attitudes of students when evaluating instructors. Seven individual student characteristics (sex, age, academic level, major, nationality, teaching preference and leadership experience) were examined to determine if there was any relationship between these characteristics and the student's attitude toward the instructor evaluation process. In addition, the responses obtained in the study were compared to those in similar studies previously conducted at Kansas State University and the University of Southern California. The research population consisted of 567 students enrolled at Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida. Students who participated in the research were enrolled in courses offered by the Management Department and they were requested to evaluate their instructor at the completion of each course. The data for the study were obtained from a 27-item questionnaire titled Student Attitude of Evaluation Questionnaire. Ten of the items related to demographic data and 17 items related to student attitudes toward different aspects of the evaluation process. Information from the returned questionnaires was evaluated and tabulated utilizing the SPSS/PC program Analysis of Variance: Procedure ANOVA. An analysis of variance at the .05 level of significance was employed to examine the research questions. On an overall basis, there was no significant difference in students' attitudes toward the evaluation system based on individual student characteristics.
However, the research did reveal some significant differences on individual items, i.e., one group feeling much stronger about a particular issue than another group. It was concluded from the research that students are strongly in favor of student evaluation of instructors, especially female students and lower-level undergraduate students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:rtd-5885 |
| Date | 01 January 1986 |
| Creators | Callahan, John P. |
| Publisher | University of Central Florida |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Retrospective Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Public Domain |
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