UWI students rate lecturers highly but want better courses
AN assessment of the quality of teaching delivered by the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona has showed that while students rate lecturers highly they want better or different course content.
Deputy principal Joseph Pereira said the assessment, done in the second semester of the last academic year, showed that 70 per cent of the teaching staff scored a minimum of four out of five in the students’ rating of their teaching. Twenty-seven per cent of the teachers scored between three and 3.9, while three per cent scored below three.
“It is therefore an indication of our students’ satisfaction with our lecturers,” said Pereira at the UWI/Guardian Life Premium Teaching Awards on Thursday.
But the students’ rating of the course material did not reflect similar results. Only 45 per cent of courses were rated at four and above, while 52 per cent scored between three and 3.9, the deputy principal said.
The survey involved 902 courses or modules of courses constituting 92 per cent of the offerings on the campus. The assessment did not include the medical faculty’s clinical section, the students of which rated the lecturers at an average of 4.4 out of five, which is above the campus average.
Course assessment for the clinical medical section was rated at 4.2 that is also above the campus average, Pereira said.
Explaining the results of clinical medicine, Pereira suggested that “maybe it’s because the medics have smaller groups of students or because they have been trying to improve the learning process. We believe it’s a combination of both”.
Dr Tomlin Paul, a lecturer in Community Health in the Faculty of Medical Sciences, meanwhile, walked away with the Premium Teaching Award. He topped a field of five nominees, including Professor Kathleen Coard of the Department of Pathology, Dr Michael Ponnambalam of the Department of Physics, Dr Hedy Isaacs of the Department of Government and Dr Paulette Feraria of the Department of Educational Studies.
Professor Elsa Leo Rhynie, principal of the Mona campus, in her remarks, stressed that the scholarship of teaching reaches beyond the cognitive domain to embrace the impact on the development of attitudes and values.
“The affective and ethical goals are not quantifiable and measurable to the extent that the cognitive goals are, but they are highly significant and extremely important in the work of scholars,” she said.
Earl Moore, president of Guardian Life, for his part, said his company was proud of its collaboration with UWI.
“It is through creative collaborative ventures such as these and particularly between our leading tertiary educational institutions and private sector leaders that our region will succeed in attaining first world ambitions,” he said.