Students' Perceptions of Course Difficulty and Their Ratings of the Instructor

Autor/inn/en	Addison, William E.; Best, John; Warrington, John D.
Titel	Students' Perceptions of Course Difficulty and Their Ratings of the Instructor
Quelle	In: College Student Journal, 40 (2006) 2, S.409-416 (8 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0146-3934
Schlagwörter	Student Attitudes; Psychology; Grades (Scholastic); Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance; Difficulty Level; Expectation; Performance Factors; Correlation; Course Evaluation; Research Methodology; Questionnaires; Social Desirability + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Schülerverhalten; Psychologie; Notenspiegel; Schwierigkeitsgrad; Expectancy; Erwartung; Leistungsindikator; Korrelation; Research method; Forschungsmethode; Fragebogen; Soziales Bedürfnis
Abstract	Research dealing with the possible relationship between high grades and favorable student evaluation of instruction has focused on several possible explanations including reciprocal leniency. Although plausible, such explanations leave out the possible role of perceived difficulty. We hypothesized that student evaluations would be negatively affected when the course was harder than originally thought, regardless of grade earned, and we also hypothesized that student evaluations would be higher when the course was viewed as easier than initially expected, regardless of grade earned. Students in their first Psychology Statistics class and Introductory Psychology students responded to global summative items regarding their teacher's effectiveness. In addition, the students indicated how difficult the class was relative to their expectations. Finally, the student's alphabetic grade was recorded. We found that students who earned higher grades evaluated their teachers more favorably than did students who earned lower grades. However, after controlling for the grade earned, we found that students who thought the class was easier than expected evaluated the professor more favorably than did students who thought the course was harder than expected, who in turn evaluated the professor more negatively, regardless of grade earned. Although these results are correlational, they suggest that faculty may not be able to influence student evaluations through leniency, especially if the students already believe the course will be easy. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10