Sources of variance in end-of-course student evaluations |
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| Authors: | Timothy Curby Patrick McKnight Lisa Alexander Simone Erchov |
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| Institution: | 1. George Mason University, USA.tcurby@gmu.edu;3. George Mason University, USA. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9067-9066;4. George Mason University, USA. |
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| Abstract: | AbstractEvaluation of college instructors often centers on course ratings; however, there is little evidence that these ratings only reflect teaching. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative importance of three facets of course ratings: instructor, course and occasion. We sampled 2,459 fully-crossed dyads from a large university where two instructors taught the same two courses at least twice in a 3-year period. Generalizability theory was used to estimate unconfounded variance components for instructor, course and occasion, as well as their interactions. Meta-analysis was used to summarize those estimates. Results indicated that a three-way interaction between instructor, course and occasion that includes measurement error accounted for the most variance in student ratings (24%), with instructor accounting for the second largest amount (22%). While instructor - and presumably teaching - accounted for substantial variance in student course ratings, factors other than instructor quality had a larger influence on student ratings. |
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| Keywords: | student ratings course evaluations instructor variance error |
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![ORCID Icon]({"type":"image","src":"/templates/jsp/images/orcid.png"} "ORCID Icon")
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9067-9066;4. George Mason University, USA.