What Instructor Qualities Do Students Reward

Most higher education institutions have a policy regarding instructor evaluation and students play a dominant role in evaluation of classroom instruction. A standardized course/instructor evaluation form was used to understand the relationship of item responses on the student evaluation form, to the overall instructor score given by students taking general education program (GEP) courses. All student evaluation information from all GEP courses at a large public metropolitan university in the southeast United States for fall 2002 through spring 2009 semesters was used for data analysis. Results suggest that students reward, with higher evaluation scores, instructors who they perceive as organized and strive to clearly communicate content. Additionally, instructors of GEP courses need to be informed that students connect the level of respect and concern shown by the instructor and having an interest in student learning with the overall score they give the instructor. Course characteristics were related to the relative starting point for the scale chosen by students, but instructor qualities were consistent when considering class size, class mode and course area (English, mathematics, communication, etc ...). Individual instructor characteristics were not considered in this study. Keywords: student evaluation, instructor qualities, general education program, core curriculum Introduction In higher education a current focus on the educational consumer is one driver of the accountability movement that pervades American learning culture. In 2008, the federal government provided $52.1 billion in financial aid support to students attending a college or university (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). Because of the amount of money being spent on education, this trend is gaining momentum (Gravestock & Gregor-Greenleaf, 2008; Landrum & Braitman, 2008). This emphasis is further supported by accreditation requirements for assessing student learning (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2008; Council for Higher Education Accreditation, 2008). Seldin (1999) reported that, "student ratings are now the most widely used source of information on effective teaching" (p. 15). There is no denying the importance of the student's role in evaluating instruction in higher education. D'Apollonia and Abrami (1997) reported that 98% of higher education institutions in the United States use some form of student evaluation and that an increasing percentage of international institutions are doing so as well (Moore & Kuol, 2005). The fact is, evaluation information is being used to make policy and personnel decisions and will continue to be utilized by students, department heads and administration for an even broader array of purposes (Kulik, 2001). One problem with analysis of student evaluation scores is the inconsistency of exactly what the scores are measuring. As for the meaning of evaluation scores, some researchers agree they measure several aspects of effective teaching while others believe they measure student satisfaction (Abrami, d'Apollonia, & Cohen, 1990; Beyers, 2008; Centra, 1993; Marsh & Roche, 1997). To further complicate matters, a generally accepted definition of effective teaching has not been determined (Trout, 2000; Paulsen, 2002). McKeachie (1997) notes the meaning of effective teaching has not been defined and depends on the goals for instruction. Qualities of an effective teacher are much easier to define. Kolitch and Dean (1999) say that an effective teacher will be able to communicate clearly, be organized and interact well with students via examples, and relevant questions. Data mining analysis techniques are a relatively new collection of statistical methods that apply to analyzing very large data sets to maximize extraction of information (Hand, Mannila, & Smyth, 2001). Data mining methodology and associated tools, such as decision tree analysis, allows all responses to be utilized, which in this study comprises several hundred thousand observations. …