An institutional study of the influence of 'onlineness' on student evaluation of teaching in a dual mode Australian university

Abstract

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) is now commonplace in many universities internationally. The most common criticism of SET practices is that they are influenced by a number of non- teaching-related factors. More recently, there has been dramatic growth in online education internationally, but only limited research on the use of SET to evaluate online teaching. This paper presents a large-scale and detailed investigation, using the institutional SET data from an Australian university with a significant offering of wholly online units, and whose institutional SET instrument contains items relating to student perceptions of online technologies in teaching and learning. The relationship between educational technology and SET is not neutral. The mean ratings for the 'online' aspects of SET are influenced by factors in the wider teaching and learning environment, and the overall perception of teaching quality is influenced by whether a unit is offered in wholly online mode or not.