Student Evaluations of Teaching: An Exploratory Study of the Faculty Response

Student evaluation of teaching instruments are commonly administered by universities to presumably provide feedback to faculty for improvement of teaching effectiveness. Instead, these measures are routinely used as a basis for determining faculty merit, promotion, and tenure, making the instruments vitally important to faculty. As a result, some faculty members may engage in various activities designed specifically to affect student ratings on teaching evaluations rather than to improve instruction, although no known research exists about the extent of such influencing activities. The purpose of this research is to begin the exploration of marketing faculty perceptions about, and problems with, student evaluations of teaching and perceived efforts to influence the measure. Furthermore, this study seeks to define categories of faculty activities and behaviors that may be used to influence student evaluations of teaching ratings and to identify possible solutions.