Student Perceptions of High Course Workloads are Not Associated with Poor Student Evaluations of Instructor Performance

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2007 by Dee, Kay C

ABSTRACT

Many engineering faculty believe that when students perceive a course to have a high workload, students will rate the course and the performance of the course instructor poorly. This belief can be particularly worrying to engineering faculty since engineering courses are often perceived as uniquely demanding. The present investigation demonstrated that student ratings of workload and of overall instructor performance in engineering courses were not correlated (e.g., Spearman's rho = 0.068) in data sets from either of two institutions. In contrast, a number of evaluation items were strongly correlated (Spearman's rho = 0.7 to 0.899) with ratings of overall instructor performance across engineering, mathematics and science, and humanities courses. The results of the present study provide motivation for faculty seeking to improve their teaching and course evaluations to focus on teaching methods, organization/preparation, and interactions with students, rather than course workload.

Keywords: student evaluations, student workload, teaching evaluations

I. INTRODUCTION

Student evaluations of teaching are frequently used in faculty performance reviews, often with a focus on one or two numerically-coded, broadly-phrased evaluation items (e.g., "Overall, the instructor's performance was:" rated on a scale of 1 to 5). Evaluation scores, and factors that may affect these scores, can therefore be a source of worry for instructors. For example, many faculty members believe that when students perceive a course to have a high workload, students rate that course, and the performance of the instructor, poorly. The corollary belief-that students give favorable course and instructor ratings when course workload is low-is also common. In one study, 54 percent of faculty (but only 26 percent of students) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "To get favorable evaluations, professors demand less from students" [1].

A number of published studies have shown little to no relationship between student ratings of course workload and overall course quality or instructor performance (e.g., [2-5]). Why, then, do beliefs relating workload and teaching evaluations persist among engineering faculty? One reason may be that many published studies [2-5] utilized data from a variety of course types rather than specifically engineering students/courses. Engineering courses are often held to be uniquely demanding, and engineering students are often considered to be a unique type of audience. Evidence that students do or do not rate engineering courses differently than other types of courses would provide guidance in applying research findings from courses in other disciplines to those in engineering. Some studies [6, 7] have shown little to no relationship between student ratings of engineering course workload and overall course/instructor ratings, but engineering faculty may be reluctant to accept either results from an individual campus system and culture [7] or from a very large pool of multiple types of campuses and cultures [6] as applicable to their specific situation. Results from only one institution may seem too specific; results from a large pool of institutions may seem too broadly homogenized. Evidence that students do or do not rate engineering courses/instructors differently at different institutions would provide guidance regarding the generalizability of published results from different study populations.

The present investigation sought to address some of the informational needs of engineering faculty who are seeking to understand and improve their course/teaching evaluations. First, data from engineering courses at two different types of institutions were examined for evidence of a relationship between student perceptions of engineering course workload and evaluations of overall instructor effectiveness. second, data from multiple types of courses were used to investigate whether students appear to evaluate engineering courses/instructors and mathematics, science, and humanities courses/instructors differently. Third, the collected data were examined to identify trends that may be helpful to engineering faculty working to improve their teaching and course evaluations.

II. METHODS

A. Data Collection

Data from two schools were used in this study. The School of Engineering at Tulane University was, between 1997 and 2002, a relatively small unit within a large doctoral-granting research university: roughly 700 of the approximately 6500 undergraduates were engineering majors.1 Engineering students at Tulane interacted regularly with peers from different academic areas (liberal arts, business, etc.). In this situation, faculty worry that students will anecdotally compare workloads across majors, perceive their engineering workload as too high, and punish engineering instructors with poor course/teaching evaluations. In contrast, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is a small school, strongly focused on undergraduate engineering and science education. At present, roughly 84 percent of Rose-Hulman's approximately 1900 students (M.S. and B.S. only) major in some form of engineering. In this situation, faculty worry that career-oriented students may perceive less value in completing work for non-engineering courses, and may rate non-engineering courses differently from those direcdy related to an engineering major. Because the environments and campus cultures of Tulane and Rose-Hulman are different, common trends in student evaluations of teaching across the two data sets may be more generally-applicable than trends discerned from one campus population only.