Abstract:

This paper studies the qualities desirable in a university professor from the student perspective. So, qualities such as proximity, interaction, etc. are neglected by the traditional evaluators methods and demanded by college students. In order to know what qualities are valued by the students of his university professor, we used a variation of the a Thurstone method known as the Law of Categorical Judgment, specially, as rank-ordering method, combined with a qualitative methodology, namely brainstorming. From a sample composed by 245 students in second year of degree of the University Miguel Hernández, we could rank, using the theoretical review and discussion groups, desirable qualities in a College Professor by order of importance for the student. The Kruskal-Wallis test for comparison of the lists obtained at four different university faculties did not lead to statistically significant differences, as neither the pairwise comparisons. By contrast, we did obtain high correlations between the orders. In this way, we can submit a single list in which its proximity towards the student adopts a full role in their valuations. This result is a wake-up call to the traditional educational assessments conducted through surveys, in which are many times ignored certain aspects of emotional competencies which, moreover, should be part of programs of pedagogical university training in order to enhance and improve teaching quality.

Keywords:

Teaching quality, rank-ordering method, Kruskal-Wallis, Spearma correlations.