Understanding Student Judgments of Teaching Effectiveness: A “Policy Capturing” Approach

Abstract

The influence of five dimensions of teaching (organization, knowledge acquired, encouragement of questions, instructor's knowledge, and presentation clarity) on 40 undergraduate students' judgments of teaching effectiveness was investigated. The students rated completed evaluation forms (each with a different configuration of responses) as to the teaching effectiveness of an instructor who might receive that given pattern of evaluation responses. The students' subjective reports of the dimensions they believed most influential (subjective weights) were compared with their statistically derived judgment “policies” (statistical weights). Analyses revealed that there were significant differences between the mean statistical and subjective weights on two of the five evaluation items (knowledge acquired and presentation clarity).