Abstract
The problem motivating the paper is the quantification of students' preferences regarding teaching/coursework quality, under certain numerical restrictions, in order to build a model for identifying, assessing and monitoring the major components of the overall teaching quality. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical beta regression model, with a Dirichlet prior on the model coefficients. The coefficients of the model can then be interpreted as weights and thus they measure the relative importance that students give to the different attributes. This approach not only allows for the incorporation of informative prior when it is available but also provides user-friendly interfaces and direct probability interpretations for all quantities. Furthermore, it is a natural way to implement the usual constraints for the model coefficients. This model is applied to data collected in 2009 and 2013 from undergraduate students in the Panteion University, Athens, Greece and besides the construction of an instrument for the assessment and monitoring of teaching quality, it gave some input for a preliminary discussion on the association of the differences in students' preferences between the two time-periods with the current Greek socioeconomic transformation. Results from the proposed approach are compared with the ones obtained by two alternative statistical techniques.
Highlights
The institutions of higher education worldwide are generally independent organizations
The evaluation is usually based upon four large groups of criteria, which comprise the major pillars of academic quality
They refer to teaching, research, academic program and supportive organizational facilities and services
Summary
The institutions of higher education worldwide are generally independent organizations. In all cases external assessment and self-assessment are critical processes for maintaining, securing and improving the quality of the services offered. The evaluation is usually based upon four large groups of criteria, which comprise the major pillars of academic quality. They refer to teaching, research, academic program and supportive organizational facilities and services. The core issue of the academic evaluation process is the assessment of the quality of an individual course/instructor by the students attending this course. By filling in a relevant and well prepared questionnaire, students evaluate, in a measurement scale, certain quality attributes, concerning the course (content, text book, grading system) and the instructor (teaching, knowledge, behaviour) that are widely considered as being of major importance. Several instruments for evaluating teaching performance have been developed and used internationally, just mentioning
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