Instructors' Perception Of Usefulness Of Student Evaluation For Teacher And Course Development: A Case Study Of Aau, The Department Of English
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Date
2011-09
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AAU
Abstract
The main objective of this study is to determine AAU's English instructors'
perception of usefulness of student evaluation for teacher and course
development. The study also attempts to find out factors affecting instructors'
perception of student evaluation. In addition, it attempts to discover whether it is
used as an input for teacher and course development.
In collecting the data, 28 instructors were purposely taken out of 52 instructors
from the Department of English excluding instructors of literature. However, the
sample was largely-male dominated because the number of male instructors was
much greater than the number of female instructors. The number of male
instructors was 25 and the number of female instructors was 3. In the
researcher's view, the sample is good because it involves different characteristics
i.e. sex, rank and specialization area. The data gathering tools were a
questionnaire and an interview.
The data obtained from the data gathering tools were analyzed using both
quantitative and qualitative approaches. Accordingly, the major findings were:
most English instructors of the university believe that student evaluations are
useful for teacher and course development if both the data gathering instruments
and the data collected using them are valid and reliable. In addition, there are
factors perceived by the instructors that affect the validity of student evaluation
which are different from those mentioned by researchers i.e. lack of skill (reading
and writing), lack of knowledge of methodology of teaching, lack of knowledge of
usefulness of student evaluation, receiving misinformation from previous
students and prejudice about the instructors and courses. However, instructors
are recommended: even though student eval~ations have some limitations, they
should conduct both formative and summative student evaluation because it is
i.lseful for teacher and course development. Educational experts are
recommended: when student evaluations are prepared, they should be rigorously
validated and reliable to gather relevant data. With regard to students, they
should evaluate instructors and courses accurately and in a way which is free
from any bias.
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The study also attempts to find out factors affecting instructors' perception of student evaluation