Students' Appraisal of a College Course

T HE appraisal of various aspects of a course of instruction by students is a matter of considerable interest to administrators, to teachers, and to the students themselves. Of late years a rather large number of especially prepared forms has been published along with the results of applying these forms to large groups of students. The present study was undertaken for two reasons: first, to secure an appraisal of various aspects of a course in mental measurement, and second, to evaluate the method of appraisal by questionnaires. Two groups of students, called Groups X and Y. completed this course; Group X during the first semester and Group Y during the second semester of the school year. Group X included 76 students and Group Y, 54 students. The groups were nearly the same in age, sex, progress through the University, and fields of concentration, but they differed in that Group X was superior to Group Y in scholastic credit-hour ratios and in mental-test scores as shown by the United States Army Alpha Test, the Michigan Vocabulary Profile, and the American Council on Education Examination for College Freshmen. In all four comparisons the superiority was rather marked since the mean of Group X was approximately the 70th centile of Group Y. A questionnaire was designed, after an inspection of similar forms and some consultations with colleagues, to record students' opinions on nine somewhat separate aspects of the course, as shown in Table I. During the last week of the course all students were asked to check the items which represented their opinions and also to make further comments and recommendations. Twenty minutes was allowed for this work. Signatures were requested but made optional. Approximately 92 per cent of the X students and 34 per cent of the Y students signed their reports. A tabulation of answers was made to show the percentage of students in each group who marked each opinion. The items in the questionnaire classified under the nine aspects of the course are reproduced in the stub of Table I. The second and third columns of the table are inserted in order to show the statistical summary of the appraisals given by the students of Groups X and Y

Mathematics education · Medical education · Test (biology · Vocabulary · Educational Leadership and Administration · Engineering Education and Curriculum Development · Evaluation of Teaching Practices · Medicine · Psychology