Student evaluation: The faculty responds

Results are presented of a survey of faculty members concerning their observations and opinions about the effects of student evaluation of instruction in a university where this practice had been a mandatory requirement for personnel evaluation purposes for several years. The respondents reported a definite reduction in morale and job satisfaction, changes in various instructional practices—mainly reduced course work demands on students and the occurrence of counterproductive actions as a result of this policy. Only limited expectations of improved ratings were indicated. There was also a clear division of opinion about the use of SEI ratings for personnel decisions that corresponded mainly with judgments about the validity of the ratings students provide.     

Student evaluation in “individualized” science programs

In recent years there has been increasing focus, particularly in the USA and England but also elsewhere, on individualizing instruction in the school. The techniques of such endeavors, especially as they relate to student evaluation, will be the major theme of this paper.     

Student evaluation of audience response technology in large lecture classes

In the past few years, audience response technology (ART) has been widely adopted on college campuses, and is especially popular among instructors of large lecture classes. Claims regarding ART’s benefits to students have received only limited empirical evaluation, and prior studies exhibit methodological limitations. The current study provides a multi-dimensional evaluation, utilizing a newly-developed measure, the Audience Response Technology Questionnaire (ART-Q). Data were provided at three points during a semester by undergraduate students (n = 854) who used ART in three large lecture university courses. Results indicate moderately positive evaluations of ART on some dimensions (e.g., ease of use, impact on attendance), with less positive evaluations on others (e.g., influence on preparation for class). These evaluations showed some variability across time of semester and course, but were not substantially affected by gender, ethnicity, or year in school. Findings are discussed with respect to the need for future research on instructors’ techniques for using ART and their influence on student perceptions and outcomes.

Student self-evaluation,teacher evaluation,and learner performance

A total of 341 Latvian students and eight teachers participated in this study of student self-evaluation and teacher evaluation. Students completed a 12-lesson teacher-directed instructional program on conducting and writing a report of their own experimental research. Sixteen classes were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: (1) no in-program evaluation, (2) self-evaluation and revision at the research design and draft final report stages, (3) teacher evaluation and student revision at both stages, (4) self-plus-teacher evaluation and student revision at both stages. Students in the teacher-evaluation and self-plus-teacher evaluation conditions received significantly higher ratings from an independent rater on their final research reports. However, students under the self-evaluation conditions had greater confidence in their ability to conduct future experiments. This research is based on Dr. Olina's dissertation at Arizona State University, and was supported by grants from the Arizona State University Graduate Research Support Program and the Assessment Training Institute Foundaton in Portland, Oregon. We gratefully acknowledge their support.     

Virtual internal thermal work evaluation in the multifield variational statements for the analysis of multilayered structures

The principle of virtual displacements (PVDs) extended to elasto-thermo-electric problems includes virtual internal elastic, thermal and electric works. The governing equations have displacement vector, temperature and electric potential as primary variables of the problem, and the elasto-thermal, elasto-electric and pure elastic problems are obtained as particular cases by deleting the appropriate contributions in the general elasto-thermo-electric variational statement. The most sensitive issue is given by thermal coupling because the thermo-elastic and thermo-electric effects change depending on the type of load and analysis considered (mechanical load, temperature or electric potential imposed and free vibration analysis). This feature means that the form of the virtual internal thermal work in such variational statements changes depending on the analysis performed and the load applied. Results about multilayered plates and shells suggest the appropriate extension of the variational statement for each analysis, and they give an exhaustive explanation for several forms of the PVD proposed.     

Student performance and attitudes using personalized mathematics instruction

This study investigated the effects of personalized instruction on the achievement and attitudes of Taiwanese students on two-step mathematics word problems. A total of 136 fourth-graders in a Taiwanese public school participated in the study. Subjects initially completed a Student Survey on which they chose their favorite foods, sports, stores, classmates, and other selections. The most popular items were then used to create personalized math word problems for the pretest, personalized instructional program, and posttest. Subjects were blocked by ability based on their pretest scores and were randomly assigned within ability levels to either a personalized or nonpersonalized version of the print-based instructional program. After finishing the program, subjects completed a student attitude survey and the posttest. A repeated-measures univariate analysis of variance revealed that subjects in the personalized treatment made significantly greater pretest-to-posttest gains than those in the nonpersonalized treatment. Subjects also performed significantly better on the personalized pretest and posttest problems than on the nonpersonalized problems. Personalized subjects and higher-ability students both had significantly more positive attitudes toward the instructional program than did their nonpersonalized and lower-ability counterparts. This research was conducted while he was a doctoral student at Arizona State University.     

Module Development Through Peer-assisted Student Support: An initial evaluation

The importance of effective module development in terms of content and delivery is becoming increasingly significant within higher education. The majority of evaluation exercises are relatively static and reactive, predominantly utilising standardised evaluation questionnaires. This paper examines the effectiveness of utilising peer-assisted student support, a form of student-centred learning to provide module feedback that cannot be easily identified through traditional methods. Data from meeting logs, observations, interviews and questionnaires demonstrates that student-centred learning feedback can enhance module development, identifying and prompting effective remedial action in shorter timescales. The paper therefore concludes that feedback from student-centred learning initiatives is a viable and dynamic alternative to traditional modes of module development that requires further consideration .     

Unpacking the logic of mathematical statements

This study focuses on undergraduate students' ability to unpack informally written mathematical statements into the language of predicate calculus. Data were collected between 1989 and 1993 from 61 students in six small sections of a bridge course designed to introduce proofs and mathematical reasoning. We discuss this data from a perspective that extends the notion of concept image to that of statement image and introduces the notion ofproof framework to indicate that part of a theorem's image which corresponds to the top-level logical structure of a proof. For simplified informal calculus statements, just 8.5% of unpacking attempts were successful; for actual statements from calculus texts, this dropped to 5%. We infer that these students would be unable to reliably relate informally stated theorems with the top-level logical structure of their proofs and hence could not be expected to construct proofs or validate them, i.e., determine their correctness.     

Student evaluation surveys: anonymous comments that offend or are unprofessional

Student comments are routinely collected in university evaluation surveys for the purpose of improving teaching and learning. Whilst student comments provide valuable insights into their experiences, there is limited published research reporting the extent to which student comments are offensive and professional. The aim of this study was to investigate the number of student comments that were identified as being offensive or unprofessional in an online unit evaluation survey collected in a semester in 2010 from an Australian university. One person read 30,684 comments taken from 17,855 surveys and identified comments considered to be abusive or unprofessional. Comments were categorised as either abusive or unprofessional and by the intended target (that is, teacher, unit, resource). Thirteen abusive comments (0.04 % of the sample) were identified. Five abusive comments were directed at the teacher and eight were targeted at teaching and learning experiences. Forty-six comments (0.15 % of the sample) were identified as unprofessional. Of these, seven comments were directed at the teacher and 34 were about units. This suggests that the vast majority of students do not abuse the privilege of giving anonymous feedback. Strategies identified in this paper to educate students and give appropriate feedback can be adopted by universities to minimise offensive comments. Universities can educate students and teachers in appropriate and professional ways of working together, in providing professional feedback to improve the student experience in teaching and learning and to support and mentor teachers in their academic careers.     

The role of statements of institutional purpose

This paper assesses the utility and role of institutional purpose statements. If they are as effective as one is led to believe, what intrinsic facts or elements make them so? Is there value in having a purpose statement, or is the value attributed to the exercise of creating and discussing it? If there is such a value, what forms and circumstances create the value? What forms do mission statements usually take? Do different forms have different attributes? In addressing these questions, two methods are employed. One is conventional in that literature documenting the theory and research of others has been carefully reviewed, but from the particular perspectives of form and effectiveness. The other is to examine a series of actual statements of institutional purpose, with particular regard to form, content, and context of planning. To elucidate the context of planning, a series of master plans and mission statements for systems of higher education are also examined. In total, 32 institutional statements and 12 system plans or statements are examined. (The plans that are examined are listed in Appendixes A and B.) The paper observes that mission statements are effective in some situations, but not in all. In some situations they may be disadvantageous. Although planning theorists suggest that mission statements follow an approximately common form, the study of actual statements indicates several different types.     

Generation of descriptive text headings

The effectiveness of having students generate their own headings for scientific text is assessed. Results reveal that generating headings enhance performance on a number of recall measures compared to either author-provided headings or no headings. Educational implications are discussed.