Student Effort, Learning, and Course Evaluation

Although the literature on student evaluations of teaching is extensive—and appears to be growing almost daily—Needham finds a “void” in that literature. In this article he develops a “general model of student allocation of effort between courses incorporating constraints on student time and ability, curricular choices open to students, and information concerning course characteristics.” He asserts that his model should help the reader interpret the conflicting results of other studies which have considered these factors and to provide a rationale for better empirical measures of student efforts and learning rates than the measures now being used.