Education Commons^™

Course Difficulty And Its Association With Student Perceptions Of Teaching And Learning--Research, Amanda Joyce

Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching and Learning

Grade inflation has long been an issue in academia, and with this comes the concern that instructors will feel pressured to inflate grades in order to improve student evaluations of their teaching. Many historical studies have demonstrated associations between higher grades and higher teaching evaluations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the relationship between high grades and high teaching evaluations, and their association with other indicators of course difficulty. Anonymous, end-of-semester, teaching evaluations were collected from 156 studentsin 6 sections of 3 unique courses in the Psychology department of a large Southeastern University between 2011 and 2014. Students …