RUNNING HEAD: TEACHER EVALUATION1

Teacher Evaluation in University

MD. Fakhrul Alam

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. Abstract

This research paper is on the topic Teacher Evaluation in North South University. Teacher

Evaluation is a process of evaluating the faculty members by the students involved in their

courses at the end of every semester. The main purpose of teaching evaluation is to provide

information and feedback to the faculty members or the instructors so that they can improve

themselves, add materials to the course and also improve the quality of the way they teach the

students here. This is a very important system to be done in almost every institute because

professional practice needs to be improved, be up to date and always be examined. Through this

research, I found out that the evaluation results are not accurate. I found that students are not

concern or not taking the evaluation process seriously. My hypothesis is that teacher evaluation

is not accurately done by the students in North South University and teachers are not getting the

accurate evaluation results. However, I also expected to find out what is teacher evaluation for

the students and some reasons through which I can prove my hypothesis to be true. I also tried

using a few secondary sources like a short talk with some students, online information. I am glad

that my hypothesis has been proved right through my questionnaire of the survey.
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Introduction

Teacher evaluation can have many purposes like collecting feedback which later helps to

improve professional skills as well as the course material. This might also help for taking

personal decisions of a faculty or even help the institute to know about the faculty well as well as

what the students think of him or her. Teacher Evaluation is a systematic process which is mainly

done almost in every educational institute in Bangladesh as well as also practiced in other

foreign countries.

Well-constructed course evaluations can help improve teaching and learning experiences

in the classroom (Teaching Assistant Fellows, 1994).

The students of the target area, that is students of North South University has to evaluate

the faculties after every semester by answering a number of questions regarding the course

material, performance of the faculty in class and so on. The topic Teacher Evaluation in North

south University seemed to be interesting to me due to a number of reasons. Firstly, as a 10th

semester student it is obvious that I have evaluated many times and every time I evaluate I find

students who are not willing to do so. I saw students evaluating on behalf of their friends too.

Therefore, I decided that I would like to work on the above topic which hopefully would

contribute a higher significance to the institute.

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Background

The research paper is based on the topic Teacher Evaluation in North South University.

Since this is a research done based on the students of North South University and also is a course

completion requirement this was not possible to know that whether any research were done on

this topic or not through the university. When a teaching evaluation is conducted with the

purpose of accountability in mind, then the outcome of the evaluation would often be an overall

assessment of the teacher's teaching performance, and sometimes judged in comparison with

those of his or her peers.

NSU have done their teacher evaluation process at the end of every semester. They give

an evaluation paper which consists of MCQ question and at the end there is comment space to

the student to evaluate. The questions are actually related to the teaching performance and course

material. Student have 5option like agree, strongly agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree to

answer all questions. Same kind of question student is answering in every semester in current

system. But are the evaluation results are accurate or not? What student thought about its

feedback? Are there actually in dishonesty or any factors present which effects the result of

evaluation? I am glad to say that the entire research completes all the above information as well

as the research paper will tell us some more interesting information.

Teacher Evaluation is a process of evaluating the faculty members by the students

involvement in their courses at the end of every semester. The main purpose of teacher

evaluation is to provide information and feedback to the faculty members or the instructors. But
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this evaluation is not accurately done by the students in North South University and teachers are

not getting the accurate evaluation results. And this is my hypothesis.

Areas of Research

The area of the research is the students of North South University answering their idea of

evaluation, likings /disliking about the process, preference on the peer form, way of answering

the questions and many more.

I wanted to know about the following information through this area of research and they

are listed below:

1. Are the students giving right answers to evaluate the faculty members?

2. Are the results of teacher evaluation accurate?

3. Do the students like or dislike the teacher evaluation process?

4. Is the evaluation having any impact to improve professional knowledge of faculty

members?

5. Are there any factors affecting the results of teacher evaluation?

6. Is teacher evaluation having any implementation toward or against the faculty

members?
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I hope the research will be helpful for the institute to improve its current status of

evaluation.

Methodology

The methodology I have used in this research can be basically divided into two parts,

primary data collection and secondary data collection. The two methodologies will be shortly

discussed below.

I prepared a survey questionnaire for the area of my research in order to get my primary

research to be completed. The questionnaire included a total of 8 questions which also included

students completed teacher evaluation semesters that means which semester is going on of the

student. I take those students, who completed 3 semesters because it will give me more accurate

results of my questions. A sample of 30 students participated on the survey approximately. The

primary data are presented through pie-charts in percentage.

I had a short talk with some students regarding the research topic as well as hypothesis.

This was more or less like a short interview with them and the results in the secondary data

collection will be discussed later. I also collect some information from the online also.
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Data presentation and analysis

1. Perception of Students about the Teacher Evaluation

This was one of my very important requirements in the research because this could be

represented as one of the factors of why my hypothesis could be proved true. The pie-chart

represents the percentage of sample students which says that 5% of 30 students think it is very

important and 25% think it is important but the majority students think that it is a waste of time

and not so important. The graphical chart is given below:

2. Are the students given correct answers to all the questions?

This was the second question asked in the survey questionnaire which represents 40% of

30 students get bore of answering the questions in teacher evaluation while 10% of 30 students

always do it properly. It is unfortunate that almost 30% of 30 students randomly answer all the

questions and 20% read a few question and answer randomly in the teacher evaluation. The

graphical chart is given below:

3. Are the results of evaluation given by students always correct?

As it is shown in the pie-chart almost 90% of 30 students think No that means the

results are wrong and 10% of students think Yes that means results are correct. This graph (fig
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3) shows that students are aware of the fact that whatever they evaluate all these are wrong and

cannot be used for further requirements.

4. Do the Students Like or Dislike the Process of Teacher Evaluation

In the pie chart (Fig 4), we can see that only 10% of 30 students like the process of

teacher evaluation while the majority that is 90% of 30 students feels that they dislike and 0%

dont care about the process of teacher evaluation. Most of the students think that there is nothing

in this process of evaluation. This evaluation process has same thing in each semester.

5. Is any change required in the process of evaluation?

Students were asked that how many of them want a change in the teacher evaluation

method. 85% of 30 students think yes while 15% think no and 0% says dont know. That

means 85% of 30 students want change in the process and 15% do not want any change in the

process of evaluation. This could be mainly happened because if the methods are changed the

students would interestingly evaluate faculty members properly.

6. Time preferred by the students when the evaluation week starts

Which time do you prefer to do the evaluation is the question. It was seen that almost

15% of 30 students complete the task very quickly taking time to evaluate in 1st week while 50%

did it anytime rather than 1st week they want to and 25% of 30 students forget about the dates and

10% wait for the advising day. But 0% students are rush at the last hour. To see the anytime

rather than 1st week and forget the dates percentages this again proves that students are

unwilling to do the teacher evaluation and giving less importance to it.

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7. Duration (time) taken by the student for evaluation

To prove my hypothesis that whether it is correct or not I asked students that how do they

usually evaluate. 75% of 30 students do not have enough time to read all the questions and

answer one by one, 5% students ask to the friend or mate sitting next to them and 20% think that

they take time for evaluation.

8. Did you ever pass your NSU ID number and password to your friend for teacher evaluation on
behalf of you?

In the Chart (Fig 8), we can see that the majority 55% of 30 students pass their NSU ID

number and password to his or her friend for teacher evaluation on behalf of him or her. And the

other 45% of 30 students did not pass their NSU ID number and password to his or her friend for

teacher evaluation on behalf of him or her.

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Reasons for avoiding Teacher Evaluation

Students do not have enough time for evaluation.

NSU does not have sufficient computer for evaluation.

Students do not concern about evaluation time.

Evaluation process is totally time consuming.

Evaluation questionnaire is same in every semester.

There are so many questions in questionnaire.

There is no implementation of the teacher evaluation as per students demand.

Summary of Research Findings

Most of the students think that this process has many problems which should need to

improve. Most importantly they think that they do not get any kind of implementation after
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evaluation. Many teachers in NSU are not actually giving proper lectures, proper guidelines, time

to study, and most importantly learning procedures to study. They evaluated against the teachers

and want some action against them. But they dont get the implementation. To see that there is no

value of evaluation they avoid the teacher evaluation. Also I find that in NSU teacher evaluation

process is not attractive to the students. They want some change in the process which may be

attractive, innovative questionnaire.

Recommendation

Process of evaluation might need some certain changes which might help the situation of

the teacher evaluation. Most importantly try to get results which will be approximately correct.

The following gives a short description on the new changes of the teaching evaluation process.

The ideas are to make it interesting to the students.

1. In the current evaluation questionnaire, there is many multiple choice questions with

five options which could be turned into yes/no questions and make it more interesting

to the students.

2. Students know the questions properly because they are doing the evaluation for many

semesters. So, they become bore to give that question answer. If there is any change is

possible such as change in the evaluation questions in each semester might sound
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interesting to the students and increase their willingness to see the change in the

questions.

3. Involve two or more invigilator in the teacher evaluation room to invigilate the

students ID with photos and try to avoid dishonesty.

4. In the evaluation, there are many questions regarding the instructor or faculty

members and course materials. Reducing current questions of the evaluation may

decrease the students hassle.

5. Give those kinds of questions in the teacher evaluation questionnaire which are

relevant to the teacher evaluation. Such as, in the current questionnaire, there is a

question about the course materials that is The subject materials of this course are

not taught in other courses. Most of the time, students will disagree with it in certain

courses. The questions might be this way Some of the subject materials of this

course are not taught in other courses.

6. On the other way, if faculty members will take his or her evaluation at the end of the

final exam or at the end of the last class by giving evaluation questionnaire, that will

be the best thing. Then the faculty members will take one copy of evaluation

questionnaire answers and submit the original evaluation questionnaire answers in the

supervision department or their own department. It will be helpful to the faculty

members to evaluate him or her by own and also by their department or supervision

department.
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7. A change in this process could be done by using the Midterm Exam Evaluation

process. This evaluation is basically short and done in the exam hall by providing a

page with certain questions to students.

Conclusion

Since there was a shortage of time I had to work with a very small sample. Hopefully I

could have proved my hypothesis more clearly and more accurately if I had the chance of

increasing my sample size. Students in the survey were found less interesting on the research

topic. It is a very negligible task to be done every semester for the majority but as we all know

how important it is but the fact is although we are aware of the importance of the teacher

evaluation but moreover students are unwilling or disliking the process. To conclude it is all I can

say is my hypothesis have been almost proved right. Last of all the survey, I conducted shows

that certain change in the process might end up with more accurate results but not exact one.
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Evaluation Questionnaire Sample Feedback from the Students

Did you find faculty member lecture suitable for class?

a. Yes b. No

Did the faculty member speak clearly and appreciably?

a. Yes b. No

Could you read the faculty member writing properly?

a. Yes b. No
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Did you understand all the instructions and class procedures?

a. Yes b. No

Did the faculty member encourage questions, involvement and argument?

a. Yes b. No

Did the faculty member answer questions effectively?

a. Yes b. No

Did you have any scheduling conflict with the office hours of faculty member?

a. Yes b. No

Was the pace of the course about accurate?

a. Yes b. No

Were the course curriculum, assignments, and projects understandable?

a. Yes b. No

References

Teaching Assistant Fellows (1994), Teaching assistant evaluation and improvement handbook,

University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, Ed Spring 1997. Retrieved

from http://www.engr.wisc.edu/services/elc/tahand.pdf
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Gillmore, G. M., Kane, M. T., & Naccarato, R. W. (1978). The generalizability of student ratings

of instruction: Estimation of the teacher and course components. Journal of Educational

Measurement, 15(1), 1.

Kwan, K. (1999). How fair are student ratings in assessing the teaching performance of

university teachers? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 24(2), 181.

Lewis, K. G. (1991). Gathering data for the improvement of teaching: What do I need and how

do I get it? In M. Theall, & J. Franklin (Eds.), Effective practices for improving teaching

(pp. 65). San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Neumann, R. (2000). Communicating student evaluation of teaching results: Rating

interpretation guides (RIGs). Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(2), 121-

134.

Smith, P. L. (1979). The generalizability of student ratings of courses: Asking the right questions.

Journal of Educational Measurement, 16(2), 77.

Theall, M., & Franklin, J. (1991). Using student ratings for teaching improvement. In M. Theall,

& J. Franklin (Eds.), Effective practices for improving teaching (pp. 83). San Francisco,

California: Jossey-Bass Inc.

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Appendix

1. Perception of Students about the Teacher Evaluation

Fig 1: Percentage of students perception about teaching evaluation

Perception of Students
Very important 5% Important 25% Nothing 30%
Waste of time 40% Others 0%

5.00% 25.00%
40.00%

30.00%
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2. Are the students given correct answers to all the questions?

Fig 2: Percentage of students correctness of the answers of evaluation questionnaire

Correctness of Question Answers

I Randomly answers all of them 30% I Read a few and answer randomly 20%
I Get tired of answering 40% I pay full attention 10%

30.00%
10.00%

40.00%

20.00%
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3. Are the results of evaluation given by students always correct?

Fig 3: Percentage of students thinking about results correctness of the answers in evaluation

Students Thinking about Results Correctness of Answers

Yes 10% No 90%

10.00%

90.00%

4. Do the Students Like or Dislike the Process of Teacher Evaluation

Fig 4: Percentage of students liking or disliking or I dont care the process of teacher evaluation
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Liking ,Disliking or don't care

Like 10% Dislike 90% I don't care 0%

10.00%

90.00%

5. Is any change required in the process of evaluation?

Fig 5: Percentage of students thinking about change in the evaluation process

Changed Required
Yes 85% No 15% don't know

15.00%

85.00%

6. Time preferred by the students when the evaluation week starts

Fig 6: Percentage of students time preference for evaluation

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Time Preference for Evaluation

First week 15% Anytime rather than 1st week 50%
Forget the dates 25% Wait for the advising day 10%
Rush at the last hour 0%

15.00%
10.00%
25.00%

50.00%

7. Duration (time) taken by the student for evaluation

Fig 7: Percentage of the students taken the duration for evaluation

Duration (Time) Taken for Evaluation

Yes I do 20 % No, not enough time! 75% Ask fellow mates 5%
15.79%
5.26%

78.95%
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8. Did you ever pass your NSU ID number and password to your friend for teacher evaluation on

behalf of you?

Fig 8: Percentage of students doing dishonesty

Passed NSU Id Number and Password for Evaluation

Yes 55% No 45%

45.00%

55.00%