Effects of mid-term student evaluations of teaching as measured by end-of-term evaluations: An emperical study of course evaluations

Universities have varying policies on how and when to perform student evaluations of courses and teachers. More empirical evidence of the consequences of such policies on quality enhancement of teaching and learning is needed. A study (35 courses at the Technical University of Denmark) was performed to illustrate the effects caused by different handling of mid-term course evaluations on student's satisfaction as measured by end-of-term evaluations.

Midterm and end-of-term course evaluations were carried out in all courses. Half of the courses were allowed access to the midterm results. The evaluations generally showed positive improvements over the semester for courses with access, and negative improvements for those without access. Improvements related to: Student learning, student satisfaction, teaching activities, and communication showed statistically significant average differences of 0.1-0.2 points between the two groups.

These differences are relatively large compared to the standard deviation of the scores when student effect is removed (approximately 0.7). We conclude that university policies on course evaluations seem to have an impact on the development of the teaching and learning quality as perceived by the students and discuss the findings.