Abstract:

Universities conduct course evaluations to improve their educational qualities. Several methods and measurements exist for lecture evaluation, related to instructors, course contents and course structures by student self-evaluation and open-ended questions. However, there is still room for the improvement of lecture quality measurements from a different perspective. For instance, course evaluation is usually conducted at the end of the semester, but some students realize the value of the lecture afterwards and would later change their evaluation of it.

This is called obtaining delayed benefits. Fujimura(2008) mentions that students realize learning benefits when they use knowledge and skills which they learned in practice. Delayed benefit has three types: emotional benefit, functional benefit, and value benefit. Emotional benefits are the feelings and emotions that students associate with a lecture, such as happiness, trust, confidence, or loyalty. Functional benefits are the tangible and practical advantages that a lecture offers, such as quality, performance or features. Value benefits are intangible advantages that a lecture offers, such as relatedness, usefulness, or costs (time, efforts and price).

We assume that when students feel their obtained knowledge and skills to be useful through the practical training, they could realize the functional benefit and the value benefit. Therefore, a reevaluation process may be needed to improve accuracy of the lecture evaluation. A primary purpose of this study is to find what benefit types affect changes of students’ lecture evaluations after a teaching practice.

The subjects took the lecture about teaching methods and skills, in 2019, and took the teaching practice in 2020. In this study, the quantitative and qualitative survey about the lecture were conducted after the teaching practice. The students were asked to fill in the web-based questionnaire about how knowledge and skills learned in the lecture were useful in teaching practice. Eighteen Japanese students voluntarily participated and the number of valid answers was seventeen. We asked students how much they changed the evaluation of the lecture, teaching methods and skills, after the teaching practice. We also asked about the Parrish and Wilson’s learning experience (LX) level, which has the nine related factors, immediacy, malleability, compellingness, coherence, resonance, intent presence, openness and trust. Finally, we asked the reason for the evaluation change through an open-ended question.

The results of correlation analysis showed that the factors of immediacy (emotional benefit), coherence, resonance (functional benefit), presence, and openness were significantly and positively related to changes of the lecture evaluation. In addition, the text analysis showed that the factors of immediacy, resonance, intent (value benefit), and trust (value benefit) were related to the changes of the lecture evaluation. Therefore, emotional benefit, functional benefit, and value benefit may affect the lecture evaluation change. In conclusion, students’ lecture evaluation may change through the practical experience. Therefore, a follow-up survey could have an important role for more accurate course evaluation.

Keywords:

Learning experience, reevaluation, teaching practice, delayed benefit.