Evaluation of Teaching by Students of a Professional Institution

Sir/Madam

Knowledge could be imparted to another person, groups or masses of people by many ways and teaching is one such method. Mothers are the first teachers in everyone’s lives. Learning involves observation, listening and understanding and imitating. All these processes are to be retained in memory for future applications. “Gurukulam^TM was the place of learning in the ancient Indian setting. The “guru^TM, the teacher, initiated the “sishya^TM, the student in the learning process and the method of teaching was mainly verbal. As the guru taught verbally, the sishya had to hear the verbal utterance properly, understand, retain it in the mind and repeat it. Students used to practice verbal teaching, so that whatever they studied, remained in the memory and whenever it was asked, they could tell it with confidence, without any mistakes.

Discovery of writing aids like paper, pencil, chalk piece, pen and writing board and recent advent of audio-visual aids modified the system of teaching and learning. The subject of teaching is variable; it may be spiritual, philosophical, mathematics, art or science. Similarly, the audience which is assembled may be school children, college students or general public. To whatever group they belonged, the main aim of the teacher would be to make them listen, understand and use what they studied for practical applications wherever and whenever it was needed [1,2]. At present, college teaching involves either the use of black board, over-head or power point projections or a combination of any two of them. The main aim of the teacher is to ensure that the students got maximum benefit out of his/her teaching.

In this article, an attempt was made to evaluate the teachers’ performances, as were assessed by the III year BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) students of Vishnu Dental College, Bhimavaram, West Godavari District, and Andhra Pradesh. Hence, questionnaires which contained eight important questions, each question containing options of two or three answers, were distributed to 80 students of the III year BDS, Vishnu Dental College, Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh,India. The questions included type, grading, audability, knowledge, attitude, attendance and motivation of the teaching faculty.

Data provided by 80 students were analyzed overall and also for the individual questions. Overall response of the students showed that 68.3 % gave valid answers, whereas 31.7% had not given any response, hence considered as missing. Individual analysis of questions revealed that 98.6% had given valid responses for audibility, followed by 84.1 % who agreed that they gained knowledge by attending classes, 76.8% said that they gained knowledge through animated classes and 58.1%. said that they cracked jokes in between classes Statistical analysis done for each question showed a cumulative percent of 98.6% for voice audability and of 100% for good lecturers, animations in classes, short lectures, power point presentations and motivation. 84.1% disagreed on the fact that they gained knowledge by reading only books, 25.4% insisted that attendance be given to late comers and 33.3% liked to have surprise tests.

Evaluation of the teaching by the students is carried out in certain Middle East and Western countries by various departments of institutions, including professional medical and dental colleges. In India, only very few institutions that show interest in maintaining the quality control of education conduct such periodical teaching assessment protocols [1]. In this study, nearly 98.75% students graded the performances of the teachers as excellent. A good teacher should possess perfect knowledge on the subject and a good command of delivering it to the students. He/she must be very easy going, approachable, one who uses simple language in a very lively way, so that the students can get familiar with him/her and enjoy his/her presence with respect, but with no fear [2]. Only when the dedication and devotion in teaching is appreciated, would the students grade the teaching as excellent.

The teacher’s voice should not only bepleasant, but it should also be clear and audible. The contents of the lecture should catch attention of the students. Teaching should not be monotonous. It should evoke interest and enthusiasm of the students, their understandability and curiosity to think and reason out. Explanations with examples and illustrations or animations that can be downloaded from the computer, will help in easy understanding of even a difficult topic [3]. However, the interesting observations of this study were that the students liked the subject being taught with examples (71.25%) and that only 2.50% liked animations. 26.25% responded to the option of “any other^TM, in which 50% of the students appreciated the teacher’s knowledge explosion concept of “reasoning or analytical thinking^TM, which gave time for the students to think and give possible explanations for “why and how^TM?

Eighty Percent of the students preferred power point presentations to ex-tempore or verbal teaching with black board illustrations. The possibility of preference of clear script projection over illegible writing may be the reason. More than 75% of the students agreed that they acquired more knowledge by attending classes than by reading books alone. This view projected the need for the subjects to be taught by the teacher. Reading books after this would make it easy for them to understand the text easily. It is important for the teacher to teach discipline to the students. As school students, they were strictly trained in punctuality; otherwise the “school gates^TM would be closed. But, once they enter into college, the mental attitudes of the students get changed. They are in a stage of “euphoria^TM and they think that punctuality is no longer required. There may be exceptional circumstances in which the teacher could excuse the late comers [4]. Once the class starts, entering the class after the teacher has started taking the lecture should not be encouraged. The students, the future citizens of this country, should first learn to practise self discipline like punctuality, respect for teachers, sincerity and hard work throughout their life time, that form a part of the curriculum. Hence, we conclude that the teaching methodology of the teachers of this professional college was excellent. The teaching also was stimulatory, providing chance for analytical thinking and innovative ideas.

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