Viewpoints of nursing and para-medical students about the features of a good university lecturer

Introduction: Since teachers play an important role in education, thus, the higher education organizations have items to evaluate their performance to promote the quality of education to determine the characteristics of a good teacher. This study was performed to evaluate the opinions of students in Semnan university of medical sciences about the features of a good academic lecturer. Materials and Methods: This analytical-descriptive study was performed on 133 para-medical and nursing students. A two-part questionnaire containing 24 features of a good educator was given to students. In this questionnaire, reliability and validity was considered and the students’ view was asked in the scale of Likert measuring attitude in the form of without importance, low importance, nearly important, important, and too important. Then, these features were categorized in the fields of research, methodology of teaching, in dividable character, and communication ability. Results: 76% of students were females and 53.4% were studying for B.S. degree. The most important features obtained in this study were proficiency on the course, fluency in speech, organizing the contents and having interest to teaching. On the other hand, decisiveness of teacher, having interest to research and the teaching experience were those items that had the least important for students. In addition, the results showed that there was a significant relation between the gender and the teacher’s personality features (P=0.025). Conclusion: According to the results, proficiency on the course, fluency in speech and having interest in teaching are the items that in selecting the teachers should be considered. Therefore, it seems some workshops are necessary for university lecturers about how to organize the contents, teaching methodology, and how to communicate with others in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning.