Abstract
Student evaluations of instruction have been conducted through questionnaires in a freshman class for fundamental physics at Kanazawa Institute of Technology. The data from the evaluations are analyzed by principal-component analysis, which reveals three components with an eigenvalue greater than 1. The first and second components are interpreted as the quality of the instruction and the basic scholastic ability of the students evaluating the instruction, respectively. We find that the first component can be controlled by the instructor, but the second one cannot be. Correlation between the data from the student evaluations and students' exam scores is analyzed by multiple-regression analysis, showing that the first two components in the data are significant predictors of the exam scores. The analysis shows that the instructor's effort of improving the quality of the teaching (first component) would be able to significantly raise the students' exam scores.
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