Students’ Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness: Satisfaction and Related Factors

The relationship between students’ attitude towards teaching evaluation and the success of a teaching evaluation procedure has been frequently investigated in education sciences. Nevertheless, accurate studies of the factors driving the rating are relatively rare. The present paper deals with the determinants of students’ satisfaction and teachers’ evaluation. Students’ satisfaction and the clarity of lectures were analysed using a 15-item evaluation questionnaire based on a 4-point Likert scale, 9-dichotomous observations in addition to student, teacher, and course characteristics. The data were collected three weeks before the end of each term from all the classes in business and economics taught during the academic year 2006/2007 at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The chosen collection method was an internet survey, i.e., the questionnaires were filled by students via internet on voluntary participation base. The study was carried out for students seeking a degree in economics. Note that such a degree represents an interesting case study due to the presence of a variety of subjects, including history, sociology, mathematics, statistics, economics, business, law, and foreign languages. Switching from the traditional in-class paper survey to the internet survey: (i) increased the number of evaluated courses and (ii) decreased the number of participating students. In order to reduce the sample size effect on the variables referred to teacher and class, we considered evaluations for classes with more than five responding students. The total sample size turned out to be of n=4111 responding students. Almost all evaluation items showed a positive impact on both student satisfaction and clarity of teacher’s presentation. Instructors teaching foreign languages proved to be clearer than those in other subjects. When clarity of teacher’s presentation was considered as a response, the hypothesis of the same-sex-preference appeared to be supported by data. The class size exhibited a nonlinear relationship with students’ satisfaction, where the medium size was found to be optimal. Schools and subjects impacted differently on the dependent variables.