Despite its original purpose of improving teaching effectiveness, student evaluation of teaching is increasingly being used for personnel decision-making. It is also often criticised for its lack of expert recommendations for implementation and interpretation, which is the motivation for the present work. This thesis aims to examine and compare the implementation and interpretation of evaluation results among the most reputable universities around the world. In the theoretical part, we identify methodological problems of implementation and interpretation, and in the empirical part, we conduct an online survey among 1,400 universities. The results show that universities are stricter in interpreting average teacher scores than the literature. Additionally, we find that most universities conduct evaluations. The implementation is usually mandatory for teachers, however, participation for students is not. This reflects in the lower response rates. The implementation is therefore consistent in some aspects, nevertheless differences that stem from the universities' characteristics exist. The biggest exception is Asian universities where participation is compulsory for students and teacher scores interpretation is stricter than in Europe and North America. Interpretation is also stricter at smaller and at science universities. Response rates vary as well – Asian, smaller, private universities, universities without a medical degree and those with an arts academy have higher response rates.
|
