Student Evaluations of Teaching

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Abstract

The present study utilizes numeric data from Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) to find which instructional factors of teaching are associated with the overall ratings of teaching. The two dependent variables were “Overall rating of instructor” and “Overall rating of course.” The participants in the study were 925 university students taking classes in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at a Midwestern US university with 10,414 students. The results of the ordinal logistic regression analyses show that instructors’ techniques of presentation were the most important influential factor for students when rating the overall teaching of their instructors. Other influential factors were instructors’ preparation, ability to clarify information, and attentiveness to student questions. Instructors’ knowledge of the topic did not impact students’ overall rating of instructors. For the overall rating of the course, students’ acquisition of knowledge was the most influential factor, while fair grading was the least influential factor.