Student Perspectives on Teaching and its Evaluation

Abstract

The research on student ratings of instruction, while voluminous, has had minimal focus on the perceptions of the students who do the ratings. The current study explored student perspectives on course and teacher ratings as well as some issues related to teaching effectiveness and faculty roles. It was found that students are generally willing to do evaluations and to provide feedback, and have no particular fear of repercussions. However, they have little confidence that faculty or administrators pay attention to the results, and do not even consult the ratings themselves. The students view teaching and advising as the most important roles that should be played by faculty, yet project that faculty, while also viewing teaching as the most important, would rank research above the more student-interactive advising. Canonical correlations among various scales reveal a strong emphasis on such issues of the importance of faculty respect for student views.