Teaching effectiveness as measured by student evaluation of teaching: an empirical study

This study focuses on the formative aspect of student evaluation of teachings (SETs) as one method of measuring teaching effectiveness from the student perspective. This study does not focus on the summative purpose of SETs, where the primary intent is forming a basis for tenure/promotion and/or pay for performance (raises). A longitudinal study of SET in an undergraduate operations management course required by all business majors, along with the grade point averages (GPAs) for the corresponding semester, provided the basis for predicting which questions (variables) on the SET predicted the students perception of overall teaching effectiveness and the impact of the SET on student GPA. Triangulation consisted of descriptive statistics analysis, variable selection regression, multiple regression with different dependent variables and exploratory principal components analysis. The results support that SETs can be used to measure overall teaching effectiveness for formative evaluation.