Instructor Reputation and Student Ratings of Instruction

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between instructor reputation, as perceived by students, and student evaluations of the instructor and course. A total of 754 students from 39 classes participated in the study. Based on what students claimed to have heard about the instructor prior to enrolling in the course, they were classified into one of three groups: positive reputation, no information, and negative reputation. Using these groupings, two analyses were performed. In the first, mean overall ratings for the instructor and course were calculated and presented by class. In the second, both instructor and course ratings were modeled using multilevel regression. Results show large mean differences in both instructor and course ratings between the positive and negative reputation groups. More specifically, students who heard positive information regarding the instructor's reputation rated both the instructor and course higher than students who heard negative information about the instructor.     

Authors and electronic publishing: what authors want from the new technology

Responses from almost 1,250 academic authors around the world were analysed to obtain their views on electronic publishing of learned journals. Currently, having a print version of journals is still more important to them than an electronic version. The issue of greatest importance to authors and readers is the continuing availability of back volumes, and there are strong concerns about pricing of electronic journals. The potential gains in publication speed through publishing electronically appear not to be a priority. Electronic preprint and reprint archives are used very little at present, with the exception of the physics and mathematics communities. Of all publisher‐mediated tasks, the peer‐review process is the most valued, followed by provision of citation‐linking. Respondents' views of future developments in electronic publishing are also explored.