Student evaluation of teaching quality in higher education: development of an instrument based on 10 Likert‐scales

Abstract

Students' evaluation of teaching skills has been an important yet controversial tool in the improvement of teaching quality during the last few decades. When searching for an apt student questionnaire to measure instructional skills, it appeared that most existing questionnaires the authors were able to collect are based on a single‐item type of evaluation. Additionally, most of these instruments lack a theoretical foundation and hardly any instrument was tested with modern tests for reliability and validity. The authors managed to create a 31‐item instrument which comprises 10 Likert scales and is based on both the educational theory and empirical data. In this article, they present the different steps in constructing the instrument and discuss its reliability and validity. The results of this study underline the value of the use of a scaling technique in students' evaluation of teacher performance.