| The use of student ratings as a method of course selection as well as teaching evaluation has increased enormously during the past twenty years. One of the major objectives of student ratings is providing feedback to teachers about the effectiveness of their teaching, and diagnosing strengths and weaknesses of instruction. The purposes of this study were to document whether providing instructors with information from student ratings obtained at midquarter would result in improved or enhanced teaching effectiveness, and whether or not it would influence these instructors to seek immediate professional assistance.;Data for this study were obtained from a survey of instructors and students in the courses which were offered in three colleges at a large, public southern university. As a pretest, all students completed a questionnaire at 3rd/4th week of the quarter, while the posttest was an end-of-term survey at the 9th/10th week. A total of forty-two courses was included in the sample. The teachers of these courses consisted of graduate teaching assistants and regular faculty. Of the about 1,100 students enrolled in these courses, a total of 79% completed the pretest, while 69% finished the end-of-term ratings.;The end-of-term student ratings were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). MANOVA outcomes indicated there was no significant difference between the treatment group (instructors receiving midterm rating feedback) and the control group (instructors not receiving feedback) on overall student ratings of instruction. However, an additional MANOVA revealed a significant difference among the graduate teaching assistants with less teaching experience at the university level.;As for the instructors' attitudes toward the student ratings, the results indicated that the instructors in the treatment group were more likely to attempt to improve their teaching effectiveness by seeking assistance after receiving the midterm feedback, than were their cohorts who received no feedback. |
