Measuring Teaching Effectiveness: Correspondence Between Students’ Evaluations of Teaching and Different Measures of Student Learning

Abstract

Relating students’ evaluations of teaching (SETs) to student learning as an approach to validate SETs has produced inconsistent results. The present study tested the hypothesis that the strength of association of SETs and student learning varies with the criteria used to indicate student learning. A multisection validity approach was employed to investigate the association of SETs and two different criteria of student learning, a multiple-choice test and a practical examination. Participants were N = 883 medical students, enrolled in k = 32 sections of the same course. As expected, results showed a strong positive association between SETs and the practical examination but no significant correlation between SETs and multiple-choice test scores. Furthermore, students’ subjective perception of learning significantly correlated with the practical examination score whereas no relation was found for subjective learning and the multiple choice test. It is discussed whether these results might be due to different measures of student learning varying in the degree to which they reflect teaching effectiveness.