Do course evaluations truly reflect student learning? Evidence from an objectively graded post-test

Trinidad Beleche, David Fairris and Mindy Marks

Economics of Education Review, 2012, vol. 31, issue 5, 709-719

Abstract: It is difficult to assess the extent to which course evaluations reflect how much students truly learn from a course because valid measures of learning are rarely available. This paper makes use of a unique setting in which students take a common, high-stakes post-test which is centrally graded and serves as the basis for capturing actual student learning. We match these student-specific measures of learning to student-specific course evaluation scores from electronic records and a rich set of student-level covariates, including a pre-test score and other measures of skills prior to entering the course. While small in magnitude, we find a robust positive, and statistically significant, association between our measure of student learning and course evaluations.

Keywords: Course evaluations; Student learning; Grades (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:31:y:2012:i:5:p:709-719

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2012.05.001

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