Student Evaluation of Teaching: Exploring Instructor and Student Perspectives with Course Redesign

Abstract

Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET), or instructor evaluations, is used as a significant instrument across the world to measure instructors teaching methods and course evaluations. With the lack of standardized SET across universities and institutions, this study gains insight into how instructors use and improve student evaluations and students’ views of how their feedback is utilized by posing questions to university students and faculty through focus groups and interviews. Data was gathered and recorded to interpret students’ perceptions with how instructors utilize the students’ evaluations and instructors’ perceptions of student evaluations and how the instructors use the students’ feedback. Results indicate that students and instructors have different values for student feedback and curriculum improvement. Implications of different values for student feedback and curriculum improvement include instructors not attempting to improve their teaching and course, students poorly rating their instructors, and students that may not be challenged due to possibly receiving a negative evaluation.