A course evaluation model using paired comparisons to integrate importance of rating criteria and students' ratings of teaching: Comparison of students' and teachers' evaluations

The use of course evaluations by students has increased over the last few decades. However, because some teachers have made negative comments about this procedure, classes should be evaluated from both the students' and the teacher's point of view. In addition, rating scales make it difficult to deal with data reflecting the strength of the students' responses. The purpose of the present study was to propose a model for course evaluation that extends the Group Analytic Hierarchy Process by structural equation modeling (Group AHP by SEM, or GAS; Toyoda, Yonemura, & Saito, 2004, in Japanese), so as to remove effects of the strength of the students' ratings and make comparisons between classes possible. The proposed model can be used to estimate an overall evaluation that considers differences in importance of criteria between students and teachers. In the present study, university students from 23 classes and their teachers completed questionnaires, after which the proposed model was applied to the data. The results suggested a difference in the importance of criteria between the students and the teachers, but little difference was found in the overall evaluations.