Student Evaluations as a Predictor of Teaching Effectiveness

Previous research suggests mixed results regarding the relationship between Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) and teaching effectiveness. The current research included two separate studies. The first study examined the relationship between SET and teaching effectiveness in a small college setting. The sample consists of students who took both an introductory course and a more advanced subsequent course with related course content. The students' grades in the subsequent course will be used as the objective measure for teaching effectiveness. I predict that there will exist a small positive correlation between the SETs for the introductory course and students' grades in the subsequent course while controlling for their grades in the introductory course. In the second study, I explored whether personality, gender, major, GPA, and year were associated with student impressions of SETs. I found no association between demographic information and students' perceptions of the importance of SETs. In terms of the amount of thought students put into completing the SETs, First-years reported investing less thought than the students in the other years, males reported less thought than females, students with a major in Division 2 and Division 3 reported less thought than students in other divisions, and introverted students reported less thought than extraverted students. The results from these two studies may be useful for the administration at the college when considering the role student evaluations play in instructors' hiring and promotion decisions.