Date of Award:

5-1976

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Glendon Casto

Committee

Glendon Casto

Committee

David Stone

Committee

H. Reed Geertsen

Committee

Ross Peterson

Committee

Robert Meacham

Abstract

One way to approach the improvement of teacher behavior is through the application of feedback. An electronic device was developed to provide immediate anonymous feedback from students to teachers in the classroom situation. The newly developed system, unlike other systems available, has the advantages of being portable, inexpensive, easy to use, and able to provide continuous feedback. As the system relies on a sampling procedure, it may be used adequately with any size class. In addition, the system possesses full data recording capability.

Experiments were designed to utilize the device to investigate the effects of immediate anonymous feedback from students to teachers and to determine whether this feedback may be effective in altering teacher behavior, and improving lecture quality. Three volunteer instructors at Utah State University participated, each from a different subject area (sociology, history, and business administration). Students signaled continuously at each class meeting throughout an academic quarter. One signal indicated that the students understood and were interested in the lecture, and the other signal indicated that the students either did not understand or were not interested in what was being said. A time-series analysis showed that in all three classes teacher ratings significantly improved at the end of the quarter when compared with baseline scores. The results demonstrated the possibility that the system may be valuable and further refinements were incorporated into the feedback system.

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