Journal of Education and Psychology

Abstract

This study presents a reliable and valid, summative instrument for evaluating university teaching by Taiwan students, namely Student Evaluation of University Teaching in Taiwan (SEUTT). The initial items were constructed with careful analysis of the definition of effective university teaching to make it appropriate for Taiwan universities. The hypothetical model designated 15 items to 4 first-order factors: commitment, instructional method, instructional content, and learning effect. Then the first-order factors were clustered as a single second-order factor, teaching.

A subject pool with 22,000 undergraduates of 2670 classes was included in the formal test. A random sample of 614 classes was selected from the subject pool in the validity examination. Although reliability indices were high, a CFA showed the hypothetical model was significantly different from the model derived from the observed data. In examining effects of the unrelated variables to effective teaching (e.g. colleges, classes size, perceived grading justice, grade expected, perceived workload, reason to take course), all of them substantially influenced evaluation. Besides, faculty and students agreed that strategies for faculty in various fields to achieve ideal instruction would be very different. Therefore, other CFAs were performed, but limited to multisection courses. Freshman English and Introduction to Economics were used as examples, and the result showed responses in both multisection courses did confirm to the hypothetical model. In using SEUTT, a comprehensive comparison including all faculty members may not be adequate. The evaluation scale in students’ minds will show effectiveness only when we limit the comparison for teachers in teaching the same multisection course.

_{[Chinese Version | Index | Journal of Education and Psychology | Other Journals | Subscription form | Enquiry ]}

Mail any comments and suggestions to hkier-journal@cuhk.edu.hk .