Student evaluation of teaching: a Partial Least Square-Path Modeling approach

Nowadays all universities carry out surveys to measure student satisfaction of teaching quality. In this work we study which are the main determinants of student satisfaction of courses, analyzing teaching evaluations filled in by students. Survey questions are designed to assess general satisfaction of students based on the following constructs: teaching, course organization and infrastructure. Structural Equation Modeling, and in particular Partial Least Squares - Path Modeling, is used to examine the relationships between the latent constructs, with the aim of evaluating student satisfaction. Data consists of teaching evaluations collected in a large public university in the academic year 2017/2018. The main result is that teacher characteristics matter and they are the main drivers of student overall satisfactions. The ability of teachers to stimulate student interest, together with the clarity of their explanations, are key drivers to increase student satisfaction. Moreover, organization of teaching and infrastructures are positively correlated with expected satisfaction, but their effect is (much) smaller.