By David Sweeney

January 22, 2007 | Who's monitoring the monitors?

Results from a study of teacher evaluation forms by a group of researchers in the department of business administration may change the way Utah State professors approach teaching.

To test the assumption that all items on the end-of-semester forms are equally important to students, the project's faculty advisers, Stacey Hills and Ken Bartkus, coordinated a survey of about 140 USU students. Hills, who directed the project, was aided by Natali Naegle and MaKenzie Martin, both freshman undergraduate research fellows who are majoring in business administration.

Students surveyed rated each of 19 evaluation items on a scale of 1-7, Martin said. The mean scores ranged from 4.88 to 6.34.

"Ideally, they should all be a No. 7," Martin said.

However, the results of the survey show students value the fairness of grading and relevance of course assignments and exams over the chance to participate in class, Hills said. The top five items also stress instructor preparedness and use of helpful explanations, while items that scored lowest de-emphasized the opportunities to make comments, express opinions and ask questions.

Because all items were rated above the midpoint of No. 4 on the scale, none was totally dismissed in the minds of students, Hills said, but findings should help professors better understand where to focus their attention.

"As a professor, I don't have the time to be great at everything," Hills said. "So, I'd want to make sure I had really fair grading. I'd want to make sure students understood what is relevant."

Still, the best way for teachers and students to monitor each other is to "maintain a regular dialog throughout the semester," Hills said. Students can't expect professors to implement immediately information they learn from the evaluation forms, because the forms must get processed and teachers don't receive them until several weeks into the following semester.

Research results were compared among a variety of demographics, Martin said. Results were presented Tuesday to the Utah Legislature.

No significant differences were found between men and women, Hills said. International students, predictably, rated items related to one-on-one instructor helpfulness as more important than did students from the United States. Students with high grade point averages (above 3.60) rated items related to workload, clarity of course responsibilities and instructor enthusiasm as less important than did students with GPAs lower than 3.60.

Freshmen and sophomores placed more importance on the evaluation process as a whole than did their upper-class counterparts, Martin said. She said this is because they are new to the system.

"The older you get, the more you know what you want," Martin said of upper-class students, who are more comfortable with the university system than are first-year students.

Two-thirds of respondents were business majors, Hills said, because the "convenience survey" was largely conducted in entry-level business classes by Naegle and Martin. The next phase of the project, Martin said, is to broaden the survey to include as many as 800 students representing a more diverse background. Eventually, the researchers hope to poll students from other universities.

After submitting a summary of their work to the Dominican University of California, Martin and Naegle were selected to the 21st annual National Convention of Undergraduate Researchers in April. The students represent one of nine USU projects accepted to the conference.

"I'm really excited about it because not a lot of freshmen get to go," Martin said of the chance to participate at the national convention. It's significant, she said, because about 2,000 projects will be on display at the national conference. Fewer than 50 were on display Tuesday, Martin said.

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