Factors Affecting Teachers’ Evaluation from the Viewpoint of the Students’ at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Evaluation of teachers is considered among top priorities in an educational institution. Most of the universities around the world including universities in Iran have considered feedback from students as the only or main source of assessment of the quality of teaching process for many years. Regarding the existing disagreements in evaluation, the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting teachers’ evaluation from the viewpoint of the students’ at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences

Methods: This descriptive analytical study was performed with the participation of 848 students studying at second semester or above in 91-92 academic year. Self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data. Content validity of the questionnaire was determined by the respective experts, and its reliability was calculated 0.73 through Chronbach’s alpha test. The results were analyzed by SPSS-16 using descriptive statistics, Kolmogrov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Chi-square tests.

Results: Results showed that from the students’ viewpoint, the areas of teaching skills (74.93±17.06), teacher’s personal characteristics (71.23±15.43), physical features and time of course presentation (68.41±25.10), student’s personal characteristics and attitude (63.79±20.83), and the quality of evaluation process in the university were important, respectively. In addition, there was a significant difference between two genders in the areas of teaching skills (P=0.007) and teacher’s personal characteristics (P=0.015).

Conclusion: In scope of teaching skills, the most important effective factors on teachers’ evaluation based on the students’ viewpoint were teachers’ knowledge and scientific proficiency in the course subject, teachers’ efforts to convey the course materials, and teacher’s manner of expression, respectively.