Students' evaluation of teaching in a Saudi Arabian university

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness by different sources is a well established practice. It is generally carried out in the form of student evaluation using rating scales. This article describes one such system designed for the College of Engineering at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It describes the operation of the system in detail, including a rating scale questionnaire about both teacher and course. The author proposes a method of analysing the responses so as to make them effective for feedback. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of this proposed method of analysis, he presents a sample analysis of a two-semester period involving eight teachers, six courses (multi-section), and 16 responses. The results show that:
1 The average response for the same teacher from different courses was fairly consistent.
2 A norm can be developed to compare the average responses for different teachers.
3 There was a good correlation between the average rating of a teacher and the percentage of students wanting to take another course with him.
4 The students' responses about the content of a multi-section course were fairly consistent from different sections of that course.
5 The overall ratings of different courses were compared with each other, and showed good consistency with the nature of the courses.
Since the results were based on a two-semester period, a semester-to-semester comparison of either the teacher ratings or course ratings could not be made, but as more data is gathered this may become possible in future.