On the Relationship Between Students’ Perceptions of Teaching Quality, Methods of Assessment, and Satisfaction

Abstract

Although the relationship between students’ perceptions of quality of teaching and student satisfaction may seem self-evident, the interaction between these concepts and related methods of assessment is rarely examined. The findings reveal that the perceived teaching quality categorization emerges as a concept with multiple facets centered on learning, enthusiasm, interaction and student engagement, communications, and practical relevance. The authors note significant links among students’ satisfaction, their feeling reactions on various levels, and their evaluations of teaching and instructors under various assessment schemes.

Keywords:

• academic achievement
• assessment methods
• educational assessment
• higher education management
• motivation
• perception of teaching quality
• student satisfaction
• teaching
• teaching excellence

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to the executive editor and an anonymous reviewer for the excellent comments on the previous draft of the article.

Notes

1. For example, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International accreditation promotes excellence and assures stakeholders that business schools are subject to review and held to a high level of scrutiny on a continual basis. AACSB International's site (www.aacsb.edu) states that institutions that earn accreditation confirm their commitment to quality and continuous improvement through a rigorous and comprehensive peer review.

2. If students are concerned about all the learning activities and assessments used to evaluate their work, then studying how the use of an assessment method interacts with and reshapes students’ satisfaction and subsequently their perceptions about quality of teaching will provide additional evidence to assist in the enhancement of the learning experience (Rapert et al. 2004).

3. In the present study we did not intend to redefine quality in terms of different ratings of satisfaction.

4. Summative decision is used as evidence to sum up overall performance or status to decide about instructor annual merit pay, promotion, and tenure. This term is the opposite of formative decision, which is used as evidence to improve and enhance the quality of teaching of an instructor (see also Berk, 2005).

5. The SEEQ was developed by Dr. Herbert Marsh of the University of Western Sydney. Marsh is an internationally recognized expert in the area of psychometrics. The SEEQ has been extensively tested and used in many courses, with over 1 million students at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

6. Educational institutions are, by the nature of their job, service institutions. In this context, we assume the definition of teaching quality is what the customer says it is. Successful service organizations are normally those that strive to provide quality service and value, and count on the contributions of all their members to achieve stated objectives.

7. Due to space limitation, further detail about characteristics of each institution were not provided here but are available on request.

8. Because the survey requires the use of human participants, we requested the ethical approval before collection of the data from Research Ethics Boards at both institutions; certificates of approval were received.

9. A reliability of .80 usually indicates 80% consistency in the scores that are produced by the survey.

10 In this study, by tracking activities reflective of the teaching process, we found that only 43.61% of respondents had been involved in early feedback forms (midterm evaluation) for professor teaching, and the rest were less involved in this early feedback. A total of 80.38% indicated their participation in the final course evaluations (student rating of teaching) versus almost 20% who did not participate in the final course evaluation (by choice). Additional data about activities of the teaching process were not reported in this study but is available on request.

11. Correlation coefficients between the happy and satisfied dimensions across scenarios hovered between .60 and .88. The correlation matrix between all responses is not reported but available on request.

12. The gender dummy variable was 1 for female and 0 for male; the seniority dummy variable was 1 for time spent at the university less than or equal to 2 years and 0 otherwise; the age dummy variable was constructed such that it was 1 for age younger than 25 years and 0 otherwise.