Faculty Allocation of Effort and Student Course Evaluations

Abstract

Two types of data were obtained on teaching faculty at the University of Utah, student evaluations of courses, and faculty allocations of time distributed among academic activties. The data were subjected to treatment by analysis of variance procedures. It was found that faculty rank was not related to student evaluations of courses on any of the five course evaluation scales and in general there was little relationship between faculty allocations of time and student evaluations of courses. It was noted, however, that students in courses with large enrollments considered faculty more “prepared” than students in courses with smaller enrollments. There was some evidence that as faculty time allocated to research and writing increased, student ratings of courses decreased.