Faculty Forum

Abstract

This article provides commentary on a recent survey (Levy & Peters, 2002) of students' views of the characteristics of the "best" college courses. Levy and Peters's study and conclusions were limited to only certain aspects of faculty, course, and student characteristics that students recognize are relevant when evaluating their academic experiences. Their results may be interpreted to promote a student-as-consumer model of higher education. I present results of a qualitative study to explicate the breadth of issues that should be considered when studying the impact of higher education on undergraduate students.The ongoing debate over the validity and utility of students' evaluations of teaching (reflects, to some degree, a struggle between the consumer or customer model of education and the view that students need and deserve to be challenged to succeed in college. A recent article in Teaching of Psychology (Levy & Peters, 2002) provided a new twist in this debate. Levy and Peters constructed and used a 24-item instrument to measure the characteristics students believed described the "best" college courses. They found that students endorsed courses that had a comfortable atmosphere, interesting content, and reviews before exams. Students preferred professors who had a sense of humor, were excited about the material, were entertaining, had a caring attitude, employed a variety of teaching techniques, communicated well, were not arrogant, were fair and approachable, and made students feel smart. Additionally, students preferred courses in which they received the grade they deserved and received a good grade. Levy and Peters reported that students did not prefer easy courses, did not prefer to give class presentations, and gave low ratings for courses that did not have in-class activities. Furthermore, students rated professors poorly when the instructor solely lectured and when professors asked students questions during class.Although the results presented by Levy and Peters offer some insights into certain aspects of student attitudes toward their instructors and courses, their methodology and interpretations are limited and problematic. First, the questionnaire and items failed to assess certain issues that may affect students' views of higher education, namely the quality of course information; the degree to which professors challenge students to demonstrate their understanding of, and their ability to make use of, such information; and the manner in

The Impact of Language and Response Format on Student Endorsement of Psychological Misconceptions

“…These findings have several implications for the assessment of student knowledge and beliefs about psychology. First, many (if not most) of the misconception questionnaires used to date have been constructed using items from Vaughan's (1977) Test of Common Beliefs, instructional texts, course content or instructors' manuals (e.g., Brown, 1984;Lamal, 1979;Landau & Bavaria, 2003) and used a true-false response format (e.g., Arntzen et al, 2010;Gutman, 1979;Kowalski & Taylor, 2009;. In each case, the rationale for question phrasing, response format as well as inclusion or exclusion of specific test items is typically based on the subjective judgment of the researcher rather than any clearly specified criteria.…”

“…Others have opted for scales that assess how confident students are in their mistaken beliefs (Landau & Bavaria, 2003;Taylor and Kowalski, 2004). Despite such efforts, no study has sought to systematically investigate the impact of question ambiguity or response format in the assessment of misconceptions about psychology.…”

“…For illustration purposes, consider the following claim: ''Most people use only 10% of their potential brain power.'' When phrased in this manner, as many as 77% of students agree with this statement (Landau & Bavaria, 2003). Yet when asked ''what percentage of their potential brain power do you think most people use'' and given 21 different choices ranging from 0% to 100%, students' responses varied significantly, from ''5% of the brain'' to ''90% of the brain'' (Higbee & Clay, 1998).…”

“…These erroneous beliefs, often labeled misconceptions, are not unique to psychology and have been documented in a wide range of academic domains including biology (Klymkowsky & Garvin-Doxas, 2008), physics (Hein, 1999), and chemistry (Stefani & Tsaparlis, 2009). With respect to psychology, misconceptions have been found to be both widespread and resistant to change where standard instructional strategies are employed (e.g., Gardner & Dalsing, 1986;Lamal, 1995;Landau & Bavaria, 2003). Although misconceptions decrease as the number of psychology courses taken increases, upper level undergraduates still uncritically accept as true a variety of erroneous claims despite their training in the core concepts of the discipline (Glass, Bartels, Ryan, & Stark-Wroblewski, 2008;Standing & Huber, 2003).…”

“…Recognizing these limitations, a number of researchers have rejected true-false designs in favor of a multiple choice format that, arguably, provides a more sensitive assessment of the direction and relative strength of beliefs as well as responding due to uncertainty or guessing (e.g., Assanand, Pinel, & Lehman, 1998;Lyddy & Hughes, 2012;Thompson & Zamboanga, 2004). Others have opted for scales that assess how confident students are in their mistaken beliefs (Landau & Bavaria, 2003;. Despite such efforts, no study has sought to systematically investigate the impact of question ambiguity or response format in the assessment of misconceptions about psychology.…”