Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) in Web-based Classes: Preliminary Findings and a Call for Further Research

dc.creator	Karen A. Loveland
dc.date	2007-07-01T00:00:00Z
dc.date.accessioned	2015-08-12T11:24:55Z
dc.date.available	2015-08-12T11:24:55Z
dc.identifier	1547-500X
dc.identifier	https://doaj.org/article/8884592f34c641ad95e173dec8afd875
dc.identifier.uri	http://evidence.thinkportal.org/handle/123456789/30033
dc.description	Student evaluation of teaching (SET) is important to faculty because SET ratings help faculty improve performance and are often used as the basis for evaluations of teaching effectiveness in administrative decisions (e.g., tenure). Researchers have conducted over 2,000 studies on SET during the past 70 years. However, despite the explosive growth in online education during the past decade, researchers have largely neglected the use of SET to evaluate teaching effectiveness in online courses. This exploratory study analyzed the actual SET data collected during a single semester at a large mid-western college that offers over 250 online/Web-based classes. The data included five dependent and eighteen independent measures of teaching effectiveness. The results indicate that average SET ratings in online classes are significantly lower than the average ratings in on-campus classes across all five dependent measures. This finding offers preliminary empirical support for anecdotal evidence cited by earlier authors in this field. Furthermore, regression analysis of the full model for each dependent variable indicated that the independent variables explained a significant portion of the variance in SET ratings. Examination of the standardized beta coefficients revealed that the strength and significance of the independent variables varied across the five dependent measures. Findings also indicate that organization of the course materials had a strong impact on all five measures of overall teaching effectiveness. Other variables including clarity of the instructor’s writing, timeliness in providing feedback, and interest in whether students learned were also significant factors in models that measured instructor effectiveness (as opposed to models that measured quality of course content). The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for administrators, faculty, and researchers.
dc.language	English
dc.publisher	Matthew Elbeck
dc.relation	http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume4Number2/Loveland%20Final.pdf
dc.relation	https://doaj.org/toc/1547-500X
dc.rights	CC BY
dc.source	Journal of Educators Online, Vol 4, Iss 2 (2007)
dc.subject	Theory and practice of education
dc.subject	LB5-3640
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Theory and practice of education
dc.subject	LB5-3640
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Theory and practice of education
dc.subject	LB5-3640
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Theory and practice of education
dc.subject	LB5-3640
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Theory and practice of education
dc.subject	LB5-3640
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.title	Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) in Web-based Classes: Preliminary Findings and a Call for Further Research
dc.type	article