Consistency of instruction among four teachers of an introductory genetics course

Abstract

Four instructors shared the teaching responsibility for an introductory genetics course. Questions commonly used by different instructors or used more than once by a single instructor were analyzed to determine whether instruction in this course was consistent among the four teachers. Differences in the percentage of correct student responses were normally distributed for all but one combination of between- and within-instructor comparisons, indicating no bias in student performance due to instructor. Paired t-tests were used to determine whether mean differences in student responses between and within instructors were different from zero. One within-instructor difference and one between-instructor difference were not zero, with all other comparisons showing student performance was consistent among instructors. Questions with the largest differences in student performance were randomly distributed among the topic areas of the course, and among different cognitive domain levels.