STUDENT PERCEPTION OF GOOD TEACHING

Abstract

University faculty and administrators have been formally gathering data from students about their teaching and learning experiences for more than a century (see Aleamoni 1999 for an informative history). The most frequent technique for soliciting student views has been to administer paper and pencil questionnaires, most often during a course session. While the most common use for these data has been to evaluate the teaching performance of professors, especially for the purposes of the retention, promotion and recompense (see Wachtel 1998 and Wolfer and Johnson 2003 for two useful reviews), other studies focus on students’ use of and response to particular teaching strategies or media of instruction, while still others examine pedagogical methods in specific disciplinary contexts. This paper reports finding based on a questionnaire survey of more than 13,000 university students at a private university in Istanbul. The survey included measures for several variables but, in this presentation, my analysis centers around those factors which student respondents identified as more or less helpful in their own learning. The survey was not an evaluation of specific faculty or of courses; rather, it asked students to rank several generic factors that made them more successful as learners. Finally, students take their learning seriously. They value those professors and those setting that facilitate their learning and they take pride in their accomplishments.

Keywords: Teaching, University Student, Istanbul.