| Research on the utility of student evaluations to measure teaching effectiveness of university professors could be the largest body of work conducted on pedagogy in the academe. The literature suggests that student evaluations are valid and reliable measures of effective teaching and student learning. Unfortunately, while there have been many studies on singular or categorical variables that may influence student ratings, there has yet to be research conducted that accurately predicts overall instructor scores thus allowing professors to measurably influence student learning as measured by student evaluation scores. This research sets out to create a multifaceted predictive model so that university teachers can focus their efforts on improving components or characteristics of a course in order to enhance overall ratings. Methods: Six semesters of student evaluation data for a history, geography and political science department (n = 7365) were analyzed using multiple linear regressions.;Multiple models were created using overall instructor score, overall course score and a question assessing student knowledge as dependent variables. Results: A single question "The instructor motivated me by his/her enthusiasm to want to learn about the subject" influenced overall instructor, overall course and self assessed learning scores more than any other variable tested. Discussion: University instructors can reasonably predict and therefore accurately improve their overall instructor scores by expressing more enthusiasm for the subject matter being taught. Unfortunately, this research did not clearly define how a student perceives instructor enthusiasm. Additional qualitative research should be conducted to understand how a student determines if a professor is enthusiastic. |
