Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2012

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department (Legacy)

Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education

Committee Chair

Choi, Namok

Author's Keywords

Course evaluations; Student course ratings; Instructor effectiveness

Subject

Student evaluation of teachers; College teachers--Rating of; College students--Attitudes; Teacher-student relationships

Abstract

This dissertation explored the relationship between student, course, and instructor-level variables and student course ratings. The selection of predictor variables was based on a thorough review of the extensive body of existing literature on student course evaluations, spanning from the 1920' s to the present day. The sample of student course ratings examined in this study came from the entirety of student course evaluations collected during the fall 2010 and spring 2011 semesters at the College of Education and Human Development at a large metropolitan university in the southern United States. The student course evaluation instrument is composed of 19 statements concerning the instructor's teaching ability, preparation, grading, the course text and organization to which the student rates their agreement with the statement on a 5 point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 "Strongly Disagree", "Poor", or "Very Low" to 5 "Strongly Agree", "Excellent" or "Very High". In order to assess the relationship between the student, course, and instructor-level variables and the student course rating, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses were conducted. Most of the variability in student course rating was estimated at the student-level and this was reflected in the fact that most of the statistically significant relationships were found at the student-level. Prior student course interest and the amount of student effort were statistically significant predictors of student course rating in all of the regression models. These findings were supported by previous studies and provide further evidence of such relationships. Additional HLM analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between student course rating and final course grade. Results of the HLM analyses indicated that student course rating was a statistically significant predictor of student course grade. This finding is consistent with the existing literature which posits a weak positive relationship between expected course grade and student course rating.

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