title: Forecasting the student-professor matches that result in unusually effective teaching.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Two important influences on students' evaluations of teaching are relationship and professor effects. Relationship effects reflect unique matches between students and professors such that some professors are unusually effective for some students, but not for others. Professor effects reflect inter-rater agreement that some professors are more effective than others, on average across students.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  We attempted to forecast students' evaluations of live lectures from brief, video-recorded teaching trailers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 145 college students (74% female) enrolled in introductory psychology courses at a public university in the Great Lakes region of the United States.
  
  
  METHODS
  Students viewed trailers early in the semester and attended live lectures months later. Because subgroups of students viewed the same professors, statistical analyses could isolate professor and relationship effects.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Evaluations were influenced strongly by relationship and professor effects, and students' evaluations of live lectures could be forecasted from students' evaluations of teaching trailers. That is, we could forecast the individual students who would respond unusually well to a specific professor (relationship effects). We could also forecast which professors elicited better evaluations in live lectures, on average across students (professor effects). Professors who elicited unusually good evaluations in some students also elicited better memory for lectures in those students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It appears possible to forecast relationship and professor effects on teaching evaluations by presenting brief teaching trailers to students. Thus, it might be possible to develop online recommender systems to help match students and professors so that unusually effective teaching emerges.
authors: Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan, USA.
authors: Jennifer
authors: J
authors: Gross
authors: Brian
authors: B
authors: Lakey
authors: Jessica L
authors: JL
authors: Lucas
authors: Ryan
authors: R
authors: LaCross
authors: Andrea R
authors: AR
authors: Plotkowski
authors: Bo
authors: B
authors: Winegard
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D000070777:School Teachers; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013663:Teaching; D014481:United States; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: G theory; Person Perception; RRT; SRM; Teaching Evaluations