Variations in students' evaluations of teachers' lecturing and small-group teaching: A study at the london school of economics and political science

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) organises an institution-wide study of students' opinions about all courses being taught during each academic year. Students are requested to provide certain background information about themselves, to give their views of some characteristics of each course itself, and to grade their satisfaction with the teaching given by individual teachers involved. This last component of the data-gathering assesses opinions, using the same substantive items, separately about three different teaching modes: lecturing; seminar-teaching; and class-(small-group)-teaching. Data exploration shows that the substantive items reduce to a single dimension in each case. One of the interesting outcomes of this research is the different levels of satisfaction sometimes shown in the same teacher, even within the same course, according to mode of teaching being assessed. For some individual teachers, students experience a higher level of satisfaction with one mode of their teaching than with another. The article explores what predicts whether teachers are given varying assessments by students according to mode of teaching. It examines three types of source for different evaluations: characteristics of the teacher, of the course, and of student evaluatiors. They have their exits and their entrances. (Jaques in As You Like It, Act 2, scene 7, line 140)