Use of the Unbalanced Nested ANOVA to Examine the Factors Influencing Student Ratings of Instructional Quality

This study utilized a 5-way unbalanced nested ANOVA model to evaluate student ratings of teaching. An effective sample included three types of course motivation, four course levels, seven levels of class size, 9 types of academic discipline, and about 3,754 classes with a total of 106,303 students. The dependent variables were student ratings for two global items: one involved teaching effectiveness of the instructor, the other involved the overall quality of the course. As a result, course motivation, course level, class size and discipline do affect student ratings for both teaching effectiveness and course quality. In addition, there is a notable interaction among course motivation, course level and discipline. Therefore, in different combination of course motivation, course level and discipline, the rating patterns will be different. Besides, difference in course level and class size will affect the results of student ratings because course level and class size are highly interacted. Based on the ANOVA results, the norms distribution for each class size was developed. This method matches the central limit theorem: the larger the class, the smaller the variance. The distributions were used to compare student evaluations of teaching in classes of the same size and course motivation. As for results, the smaller the class size, the higher the rating except in elective courses where there is a U-shaped trend for class size. However, academic discipline has strong impact on student ratings and is highly interacted with course motivation. It is worth to describe the distribution with separated discipline and course motivation categories.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Chiu, Shu-Wan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wardrop, James L.

• Education, Educational Psychology

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9971050

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/80389