Debora Aquario

Evaluating quality of the didactics at university: the opportunities offered by latent class modeling

Purpose Students’ evaluation of teaching quality plays a major role in higher education. Satisfaction is not directly observable, nevertheless it can be measured through multi-item measurement scales. These instruments are extremely useful and their importance requires accurate development and validation procedures. The purpose of this paper is to show how latent class (LC) analysis can improve the procedures for developing and validating a multi-item measurement scale for measuring students’ evaluation of teaching and, at the same time, provide a deeper insight in the phenomenon under investigation. Design/methodology/approach The traditional literature highlights specific protocols along with the statistical instruments to be used for achieving this goal. However, these tools are suited for metric variables but they are adopted even when the nature of the observed variables is different, as it often occurs, since in many cases the items are ordinal. LC analysis takes explicitly into account the ordinal nature of the variables and also the fact that the object of interest is unobservable. Findings The data refer to the questionnaire to evaluate didactics to the students of the University of Padua. Within LC analysis allows an insight of scale properties, such as dimensionality, validity and reliability. Moreover, the results provide a deeper view in the way students use the scale to report satisfaction suggesting to revise the instrument according to the suggestion by the National Agency for University Evaluation. Originality/value The paper gives an original contribution on two sides. On the side of methods, it introduces a more accurate methodology for evaluating scales to measure the students’ satisfaction. On the side of applications, it provides important suggestions to the university management to improve the process of quality of the didactics evaluation.

Teaching competences in Italian universities: an attempt of classification to inform professional development processes

How we can improve the quality of teaching in the university degree courses? What are the professors’practices and the beliefs about their role in the students’ learning process? A group of spokespersons of seven Italian Universities has carried out an integrate sources study to answer those questions and to define a programme of activities for developing didactic skills of the teachers. This paper aims to illustrate the design and the results of a research project which involved 4,289 university professors (59% of the target population), who were teaching courses at bachelor and master level during the academic year 2014/15. The data were directly gathered by a CAWI questionnaire which was distributed to the whole teaching staff; the survey results were linked to administrative data related to the educational offer and students’ evaluation of teaching in the same academic year. The results were summarized using some indicators, which showed the diffusion of good practices of teaching, support needs, beliefs, interest and availability of the respondents. We verified the reliability of these indicators and, by means of them, we identified sub-groups of areas of expertise and needs to involve teachers in appropriate different and integrated activities, directed to develop teachers’ professional competences.

Valutazione della qualità della didattica universitaria: le iniziative in corso. Tra eccellenze e criticità: il punto di vista dei docenti sulla didattica universitaria

The aim of the present paper is to illustrate the first results deriving from the qualitative analysis of open questions included in PRODID (Teacher professional development and academic educational innovation) Question¬naire. The questions have been formulated in order to collect the point of view of teachers about excellences and innovations, perceived critical aspects in their teaching practice and the need of support for the improvement of teaching. The analysis has been realized through the use of software Atlas.ti. In particular, the analysis has been developed in order to underline strengths and weaknesses as well as the necessary support for the improvement of teaching and teacher professionalism. Findings are presented illustrating the distributions based on the School (context in which the single course is realized) as well as the thematic issues emerged from teachers’ answers. Thematic issues are then discussed on the basis of the related scientific literature.