Student evaluation of courses: what predicts satisfaction?

Abstract

The main goals of course evaluations are to obtain student feedback regarding courses and teaching for improvement purposes and to provide a defined and practical process to ensure that actions are taken to improve courses and teaching. Of the items on course evaluation forms, the one that receives the most attention and consequently the most weight is the question, ‘Overall, I was satisfied with the quality of this course.’ However, no attention has been placed on examining the predictors of students being ‘satisfied with the quality of this course’ overall. This study attempts to address this gap. The findings show that while student characteristics and reasons for enrolling in a course are predictors of overall satisfaction, it is the evaluation questions that predict the majority of the variation in course satisfaction. The findings also reveal that faculty‐selected optional questions are stronger predictors of overall satisfaction than compulsory questions.

Keywords:

• course evaluation
• overall satisfaction
• student ratings

Notes

1. ‘Course’ here refers to an individual course/unit within a program and ‘program’ refers to an approved sequence of courses/units which leads to a university award.

2. It is acknowledged that evaluation of a course is not entirely independent of evaluation of teaching.