This report describes statistical analyses performed on data collected in the Spring of 2015 from the pilot study of proposed revised and new items in the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction (SRI) system. Described are the methods employed, results obtained, and decisions made in selecting items for the updated instruments. The procedures occurred…

Student satisfaction with a course is important because it can contribute to student retention, and it can also be used as one way to assess faculty effectiveness. This investigative work suggests that course satisfaction among non-traditional, adult students seeking business degrees is positively influenced by giving attention to four specific…

The goal of this study was to explore whether differences in student academic indicators exist between taking a course face-to-face (F2F) and taking a course via distance education (DE). Three hundred and eighty five students were enrolled in a course offered, both, as F2F (n = 116) and as DE (n = 269). Course content, instructor, textbook…

Student ratings of teaching effectiveness are widely used to make judgments of faculty teaching performance. Research, however, has found that such ratings may not be accurate indicators of teaching performance because they are contaminated by course easiness. Using student ratings of 9855 professors employed at 79 different colleges and…

This study examines the pedagogical conditions that contribute to a productive teaching and learning experience in diversity courses, using the University of Utah (UU) as the case study. The purpose of this research is to assess whether diversity courses are effective (successful) in helping students gain more information about nondominant groups…

The impact of students' prior interest in course subject matter on their evaluations of instructional effectiveness was determined. Students' evaluations of instructional effectiveness were collected in two different university settings involving 1,102 classes, while instructor self evaluations were also collected in one of these settings…

Students' course evaluations were related to 16 background characteristics for 511 undergraduate courses and 221 instructors. Each separate variable explained less than five percent of the variance. The four most influential background variables were: prior subject interest, expected grades, workload/difficulty, and percent enrolled for general…

The study described in this report was conducted at the State University of New York (Geneseo) to determine which instructional variables were most responsible for students' liking or disliking for a course (student affect), course satisfaction, and voluntary participation in additional course work in a field (behavioral intent). The report first…

Two sections of an introductory educational psychology course given at the University of Akron were restructured using some nontraditional elements. Student evalutions of the course's content and structure and student achievement measures were used to analyze the effectiveness of the changes. The statistical analyses are detailed. The results are…

The study described in this paper outlines an attempt to explore those factors that contribute to learning performance improvement in laboratory instruction. As a case study, the educational methodology involved in a basic microcontroller course was analyzed. Traditional lab sessions based on the control of peripherals with low interactivity have…

An attitude rating scale and instructional assessment survey were administered in 62 classes at the State University of New York at Cortland to examine the relationship between student ratings of instruction and students' course-oriented attitudes. The Adjective Rating Scale (ARS) was designed to measure course and program-oriented attitudes, and…