title: Investigating teaching performance in seminars; a questionnaire study with a multi-level approach.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Teachers play an important role in seminars as facilitators and content experts. However, contextual factors like students' preparation, group size, group interaction, and content appear to influence their performance. Understanding the impact of these contextual factors on students' perception of teaching performance may help to further understand seminar teaching. Besides that, it may help curriculum organisers and teachers to get more insight in how to optimise their versatile role in seminars. The aim of this study is to investigate how students' perception of teaching performance in seminars is explained by students' extent of preparation, seminar group size, group interaction, and content.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Utrecht Seminar Evaluation (USEME) questionnaire was used to collect information on teaching performance and the aforementioned explanatory variables. To account for intra-student, intra-seminar, and intra-teacher correlation in the data, multilevel regression was used to analyse 988 completed questionnaires in 80 seminars with 36 different teachers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Group interaction and seminar content had large (B = 0.418) and medium (B = 0.212) positive effects on perceived teaching performance scores, whereas the effects of students' preparation (B = -0.055) and group size (B = -0.130) were small and negative.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides curriculum organisers and teachers indications on how to optimise variables that influence perceived teaching performance in seminars. It is suggested that teachers should search for the most appropriate combination of motivating and challenging content and facilitation method within seminars to optimise discussion opportunities between students.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. a.spruijt@uu.nl.
authors.forename: Annemarie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Spruijt
authors.forename: Jimmie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Leppink
authors.forename: Ineke
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Wolfhagen
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scherpbier
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: van Beukelen
authors.forename: Debbie
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jaarsma
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003479:Curriculum; D004493:Education; D005180:Faculty, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013663:Teaching / Q000592:standards*