Student Evaluation of University Teaching Quality: Analysis of A Teacher's Rating Scale for A Sample of University Students

Students in the classroom observe and experience different types of teachers' behaviours including their interest and mastery of the subject, ability to stimulate intellectual curiosity, fairness in grading, student teacher communication, and teachers' attitude toward the students. Yet in Pakistan their evaluations are seldom sought in any systematic way for assessment of teaching quality. The present study was designed to devise an instrument named as Peshawar University Teachers' Rating Scale (PUTRS) primarily for use by teachers themselves., for voluntary self-assessment aimed at self-improvement and also to evaluate students' perceptions of university teaching quality. It is a Likert-type scale consisting of 25 items. A total of 2038 post-graduate students of Peshawar University were included from 19 teaching departments. The number of teachers who were evaluated by this sample was 144. Construct validity was determined by factor­ analysis and item-total techniques. Factor analysis revealed PUTRS as a uni-dimensional test. Internal consistency estimates of reliability (coefficient alpha) for the total scale is .95. The results demonstrated that PUTRS is a reliable and valid test to be used by teachers who want feedback that would pinpoint their specific strengths and weaknesses from students' point of view.