Student ratings of college teaching: a comparison of faculty and their students

Based on the review of student ratings myths by Aleamoni (1987, 1999), a survey research design was used to analyse differences between college students' (n = 968) and faculty's (n = 34) perceptions. Generally, students held stronger beliefs in these myths, in that they believed faculty with excellent publication records were better qualified to evaluate teaching and that student ratings on single general items are accurate measures of teaching effectiveness. On the other hand, faculty believed that student ratings were invalid and unreliable. Further examination of student characteristics revealed that male students held stronger beliefs in these myths. Finally, students' beliefs in these myths were correlated with their actual ratings of nine dimensions of the Student Evaluation of Educational Quality. A discussion as well as suggestions for using student ratings is provided.     

The relation of disparity in student and faculty educational attitudes to early student transfer from college

Educational attitudes of entering students (N=236) and full-time faculty (N = 48) at a liberal-arts college for women were measured by the Student Orientations Survey (SOS) and the Faculty Orientations Survey (FOS). Attitudes of students who transferred from the college prior to the sophomore year were similar to those who remained on dimensions of educational purpose, peer relationships, and public position. Attitudes of transfers differed significantly from those of remaining students on dimensions concerned with the process of education and faculty-student power relationships. The absolute disparity between faculty and student attitudes on these same dimensions of process and power was greater for students who transferred than for students who remained. Implications for adapting the curricular-instructional process to reduce attrition and for utilizing such an assessment of student and faculty educational orientations in academic counseling are discussed. Suggestions are made for extending the study to identify possible relationships between disparity in faculty-student educational attitudes and attrition at other institutions.     

Espoused teaching paradigms of college faculty

The purpose of this research was to ascertain the impact of an array of variables on the espoused teaching paradigms and instructional behaviors of college faculty. The study, which was exploratory and speculative, alternately analyzed espoused teaching paradigms as independent and dependent variables. Analyses were based on data collected from a large national sample of college faculty (N = 443) spread across 163 colleges and universities and compared across four academic disciplines (English, biology, mathematics, and psychology). The results of the inquiry demonstrated gender, academic discipline, and some contextual variables to be the most significant predictors of faculty teaching paradigms. Furthermore, manifestations of teaching paradigms were explicitly reflected in the frequencies of instructional behaviors reported by the faculty surveyed. It was concluded that contingency theories of leadership offer a framework that facilitates a multivariate analysis of teaching-learning.The author was a doctoral candidate at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University at the time this research was conducted.     

Advising time inventory: Consequences of the general college individualized baccalaureate degree program on faculty advising,activities, and academic load

Faculty of the General College are assigned advising responsibilities in addition to their teaching load. Full-time members, for example, advise 35–40 students per year. When the College initiated an individualized baccalaureate degree program in 1971, little provision was made for consequent changes on the advising function and the academic load. As a result, advisers, faced with the complex and time-consuming matters that adhere to individualized learning programs, felt mounting pressure. Large numbers of evening school students were attracted to the program and sought advice and, upon admission, expected to be assigned a faculty adviser. The College made no formal acknowledgment of the addition of the non-day school advisees to advisers' loads. Strained by the overburden, faculty participated in this study to identify how much real time they spend in advising, with whom, and on what kinds of activities. Evidence from this study was used to support their request for recognition by the College of the changed nature and full scope of their advising work.The author wishes to acknowledge Drs. Paul J. Feltovich and Thomas Brothen for their help with the researching of this paper.     

Institutional goals and faculty attitudes toward collective negotiations

This article reports on research investigating the relationship between university faculty and administrators' perceptions of institutional goals and functions and faculty attitudes toward collective negotiations. Faculty and administrators of a large state university were sampled. Those sampled were divided into three groups: administrators, faculty with favorable attitudes toward collective negotiations, and faculty with unfavorable attitudes toward collective negotiations. The three test groups were compared on the basis of their perception of the importance the institution accorded goals and the emphasis given institutional functions. The findings indicated that faculty with favorable attitudes toward collective negotiations differed significantly from the other test groups in their perceptions of the importance the institution accorded goals and functions. The findings support March and Simon's theory of formal organization.     

Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook are one of the latest examples of communications technologies that have been widely-adopted by students and, consequently, have the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations with faculty. However, faculty members have a track record of prohibiting classroom uses of technologies that are frequently used by students. To determine how likely higher education faculty are to use Facebook for either personal or educational purposes, higher education faculty (n = 62) and students (n = 120) at a mid-sized southern university were surveyed on their use of Facebook and email technologies. A comparison of faculty and student responses indicate that students are much more likely than faculty to use Facebook and are significantly more open to the possibility of using Facebook and similar technologies to support classroom work. Faculty members are more likely to use more “traditional” technologies such as email.     

University faculty attitudes and knowledge about learning disabilities

ABSTRACT

Adults with learning disabilities (LD) constitute one of the fastest growing populations of students attending institutions of higher education. Faculty members play an important role in the adjustment and success of these students. The current study investigated the perceptions towards LD of faculty members at a public university in Israel. Specifically, the study examined the level of contact, attitudes, knowledge, and training of faculty members with respect to students with LD. The results demonstrated that faculty members overall had a significant amount of contact with and held positive attitudes towards students with LD. However, it appeared that faculty members would benefit from information regarding the current definition of LD, related legislation about LD and other disabilities, and training and support services for LD. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.     

Views of cheating among college students and faculty

College students (N = 446) and faculty (N = 97) completed a survey examining views of cheating. Agreement was noted on most situations. When differences were noted, students tended to be stricter than faculty in their evaluations and were more likely than faculty to label a situation as cheating. Opinions and views of cheating were influenced more by behavior, whether “premeditated” or “opportunistic,” than by intention.     

对高校大学生体育态度的调查研究

以省内5所大学600名在校本科生作为对象,对高校大学生的体育态度进行调查分析.结果表明,省内高校大学生对体育活动的态度总体上是积极的,但仍有一部分学生认为是为了应试而被迫参加体育活动,影响大学生参加体育锻炼的主要因素是由于体育场所设施的匮乏,缺少合理有效的组织,另外大学生们学习压力也较大影响了他们参加体育活动的积极性;大学生对目前体育课的满意度还是较低的,体育教学必须在教学手段、方式和方法上进行改革.     

Undergraduate political attitudes: An examination of peer,faculty, and social influences

A socialization perspective is used to examine the processes through which undergraduate student political attitudes are influenced by peers, faculty, and social trends. Using the model of undergraduate socialization provided by Weidman (1989) as a framework, I examine how the normative contexts of college campuses and students' interactions with peers and faculty serve to influence the political orientations of students, net of precollege and college characteristics. Based on longitudinal data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the results indicate that student orientations change in ways quite similar to trends observed more generally, and that peer and faculty normative contexts tend to have a positive influence of equal magnitude on political orientations of students.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1995 meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.     

Selected characteristics,roles, goals,and satisfactions of department chairmen in state and land-grant institutions

Chairmen at 38 state and land-grant institutions were found to be involved in three major roles: academic, administrative, and leadership. The academic role consists of duties of student involvement and research activities. Chairmen enjoy this role and report high emphasis on concurrent goals but feel frustrated in terms of time to pursue commensurate activities. The administrative role requires the majority of time and also contains some of the less desirable duties. In addition, administrative goals are seen as over-emphasized. The leadership role involves tasks related to academic personnel and program development. It is a major satisfaction realized by accepting the position of chairman. Developing abilities of faculty members and maintaining academic freedom are the two most important goals in this role. The respondents also made suggestions on changes and development programs which would improve their effectiveness.     

试论教师团队创新精神

团队创新是民族、国家发展的灵魂和动力，是市场竞争和国家经济发展的核心力量；教师团队创新精神是全面实施素质教育的核心要求和教师肩负教育历史使命的重要条件；教师须主动适应新形势，发扬团队创新、自主创新精神，为培养创新型人才，建设创新型国家做出贡献。     

Academic inbreeding and publication activities of Russian faculty

The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity measured by the quantity and quality of publications, while others demonstrate the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in the studies of different countries and within countries. This variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under-explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty. The research was conducted using data from the ‘Monitoring of Educational Markets and Organizations’ survey. The results show that there is no significant effect of academic inbreeding on publication productivity: no substantial and robust differences in publication activity between inbreds and non-inbreds have been found. The paper finishes with a discussion of possible explanations inherent in the Russian academic system.     

Professional socialization and contemporary career attitudes of three faculty generations

As one aspect of a study of individual and organizational conditions contributing to faculty vitality, career socialization experiences and current career attitudes of three faculty generations were compared for two groups of tenured university faculty members. The first group was a representative sample drawn from the fields of the humanities, biological sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences. The second was a selected sample of faculty from the same areas who had been identified by judges as highly active in teaching, research, and service. The analyses focus on differences in the professional socialization experiences and career attitudes of the two groups that appear to be indicative of career success. Within these groups the generational trends are also examined.Presented at the 23rd Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Toronto, May 1983.     

A study of the relationships between faculty characteristics,subject field,and course grading patterns

This paper describes an analysis of faculty grading patterns at a large public university. It introduces a methodology to both normalize and stabilize grade data by courses. Using this method, we report on grading patterns for over 1,000 teachers, giving more than 40,000 grades in approximately 2,000 courses. The findings indicate that the academic field of the course is strongly related to the types of grades assigned. Courses emphasizing quantitative and factual learning tend to have assigned lower grades. The higher grades are found in career-oriented courses, such as teacher training. This was shown in separate analyses for undergraduate and graduate courses. For undergraduate courses, lower grades were found in freshman and sophomore courses as compared with junior and senior courses. The academic credentials and personal characteristics of the teachers were only moderately related to grades. Temporary teachers had higher grades in their courses, but such personal characteristics as sex, marital, and minority status were not systematically related to grades given. There was a tendency in undergraduate courses that as class size increased, the proportion of higher grades decreased.     

Interaction of efficacy,commitment, and expectations in the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining

A model of the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining is developed which reflects recent developments in theory and research in organizational behavior. The model is an alternative to those grounded in need-satisfaction theories and takes into account interaction effects among variables. Hypotheses are formulated which explore how faculty members develop: (1) beliefs about, and effective responses toward, their work environment; and (2) propensities to wish to change that environment by implementating collective bargaining. Empirical data are analyzed to assess the main effects of, and interactions among, organizational commitment, perceived personal efficacy, and expectations with respect to the impact of bargaining.An earlier draft of this article was presented before the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Chicago, March 1978.     

Recommendations of transgender students,staff, and faculty in the USA for improving college campuses

Research indicates that transgender individuals frequently experience marginalisation and interpersonal victimisation within college and university settings. Missing from the literature is a discussion of what can be done to address such patterns in higher education, based upon empirical data gathered from transgender and gender non-conforming students, staff, and faculty. The present study aimed to fill this gap by reporting on solutions offered by a sample of 30 individuals in one US state while integrating a lens of intersectionality. Five resulting themes include (a) offer education, campus programming, and support for trans individuals; (b) improve university systems and procedures for recording one's name and gender; (c) encourage greater inclusivity and recruitment of diverse groups; (d) make physical changes to facilities; and (e) hold people accountable. These findings suggest institutional actions and policy changes for higher education administrators and others committed to improving campuses for transgender and gender non-conforming people.     

Course evaluation and attitudes toward college teaching

Prior research suggests that attitudes may be one category of personal (student) variables that students bring to the task of evaluating college courses and their instructors. In a previous study, attitudes toward college teaching, in general, and the perceived progessivism of instructors, in particular, were associated with students' evaluations of courses. Perceived attitudes were a kind of evaluation. The results of the study raised the question as to when the attitude-evaluation relation was first formed in the course of a semester and whether a causal order between them could be established. The present study, using a repeated-measures design, replicated the major findings of the previous study on a cross-section of University of Haifa students attending 22 courses. While there is no clear evidence for the priority of either attitudes or evaluation, the findings indicate that their association is formed early in the course, with some further consolidation later on. Both attitudes and evaluations are remarkably stable during the course. In view of these findings it is suggested that classroom evaluations might be moved back to one of the first meetings of the course to allow for feedback and changes in the instructor's presentation. Moreover, perceived attitude measures could be developed into an indirect measure of teacher performance.