Student ratings to evaluate the teaching effectiveness: Factors should be considered

Abstract

[EN] The study discusses the student ratings of a professor teaching sociology disciplines in different undergraduate courses. The data were obtained from questionnaires consisting of a series of inquiries about the discipline, focusing on how it fits in the curricular structure (discipline evaluation) and, also, on teacher’s performance (professor evaluation). A total of 480 students answered the questionnaire and, for each question they had a total of five possible answers: very poor (1 point), poor (2 points), fair (3 points), good (4 points) and excellent (5 points). Considering discipline and professor evaluations, students from Animal Science, Food Engineering and Veterinary Medicine courses consider "fair" the performance of the sociology professor. Regarding to the professor evaluation, the students of the three undergraduate courses considered the performance of the teacher "good". For discipline evaluation, the Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine students considered the discipline "fair" and the Food Engineering students considered the discipline "poor". The results obtained can serve as a basis for the design of a institutional evaluation system of teaching based on student ratings, however the evaluation of the discipline and the performance of the teacher must be considered separately.