College and Research Libraries


MARY JANE DONALDSON and JOHN F. HARVEY 

Library School Instructor Evaluation 

Since 1960 students have been asked .to evaluate all courses taken in 
the Drexel library school. Results of the evaluations are tabulated and 
implications are discussed; they are also compared with similar studies 
in other disciplines and at other institutions. Summer school courses 
were better liked than those taken during the year; women instructors 
scored higher than men; courses in specialized library work ranked 
higher than others. 

IN 1960 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE OF TECH-
NOLOGY graduate school of library sci-
ence intiated a program of evaluation 
of faculty members by students. Student 
ratings are obtained for each section 
taught by full-time instructors during 
their first three quarters at Drexel, and 
for the first four courses taught by part-
time instructors. Normally the evalua-
tions are obtained in the last class meet-
ing before the final examination. 

The evaluations are intended to serve 
three purposes. Primarily, it is hoped 
that the ratings will aid the instructor 
in improving his teaching methods by 
pointing out specific areas needing im-
provement and by revealing to the in-
structor his students' reactions to him, 
both positive and negative, since "only 
by accident will the teaching of a man 
ignorant of the reaction of his class be 
effective.''1 Second, the ratings assist the 
administration in judging faculty mem-
bers' effectiveness. A third purpose is to 
give students a voice in school adminis-
tration. 

1 W. R. Wilson, "Students Rating Teachers," Jour-
nal of Higher Education, III (February 1932), 79. 

Miss Donaldson is Research Assistant and 
Dr. Harvey is Dean of the Graduate School 
of Library Science, Drexel Institute of Tech-
nology. 

470/ 

Since the 1920's, and especially in the 
last two decades, student evaluation of 
instructors has received increasing atten-
tion from educators and researchers. In 
general, this research has shown student 
evaluation to be reliable and valid. In 
his survey of the subject in the Hand-
book of Research on Teaching, H. H. 
Remmers cites various studies which 
have shown that student ratings were 
not appreciably influenced by the diffi-
culty of the course, by the halo effect, 
by the grades given to raters, or by the 
instructor's popularity in extracurricular 
activities. Remmers cites further studies 
showing when twenty-five more ratings 
were averaged they were as reliable as 
the better mental and education tests, 
and when alumni graduated ten years 
earlier were asked to rate their college 
instructors, their ratings agreed substan-
tially with those of the same instructors 
by students currently enrolled. 2 

The use of student evaluation is ap-
parently widespread: in 1960 Stecklein 
cited evidence that 320 colleges and 
universities in the United States had 
used student . ratings.3 Despite the 
amount of attention given student rat-
ings on the undergraduate level, how-
ever, this subject has received little at-

2 N. L. Gage, ed. , Handbook of Research on Teach-
ing (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963) , p. 367-68. 

8 lbid., p. 368. 



Library School Instructor Evaluation I 471 

tention at the graduate level and ap-
parently none in library science. Yet it 
would seem that ratings might play a 
particularly important role in library 
education since, like instructors in other 
professional schools, most library school 
instructors have been trained primarily 
as professional practitioners rather than 
as teachers, and sometimes "the teachers 
drawn from the ranks of the profession 
are inadequately prepared for teach-
ing."4 For the instructor with little ex-
perience or training in teaching methods, 
student ratings can point out areas on 
which he must concentrate to increase 
his effectiveness. 

With the hope that a study of there-
sults of student evaluations might pro-
vide insights into the problems of teach-
ing library science on the graduate level, 
a study was made of the five-year Drexel 
evaluation program. The data upon 
which the study was based were limited 
in several aspects: in the first place, 
since ratings were generally obtained 
only for part-time and full-time instruc-
tors while they were still relatively new 
to the job, they do not necessarily pro-
vide a representative sample of all sec-
tions taught; second, the form of rating 
sheet has undergone slight modifications; 

4 Thelma Eaton, "Who is a Good Library School 
Teacher?" Improving College and University Teaching, 
II (May 1954), 26. 

and third, in a few cases not all of the 
data was recorded on the master sheets. 

The evaluation forms filled out anony-
mously by the students consisted of a 
list of attributes generally recognized to 
be associated with effective teaching. · 
For each attribute students were asked 
to rate the instructor on a four-point 
scale-excellent, good, fair, and poor. 
The rating unit was the individual class 
section, so if an instructor taught three 
class sections in a given quarter he re-
ceived three separate ratings. In compil-
ing the scores for each section a master 
sheet was made which recorded the 
number of times each point on the grad-
ing scale was marked for each attribute. 
The total number of marks for each 
point on the grade scale was then fig-
ured. The final rating score was the per-
centage of all the marks which were at 
the excellent and good points of the 
scale. For instance, if thirty students in 
a section made a total of 200 evaluation 
decisions, 180 of which were at the ex-
cellent and good points of the scale, the 
instructor's rating for that section was 
90 per cent. 

Also recorded on the master sheet was 
a list of all voluntary student comments 
and the rank of that section compared 
with all other sections rated that quar-
ter. At the end of the quarter-after all 
course grades had been turned in-a re-

TABLE I. FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF STUDENT RATINGS 

RATINGS FOR RATINGS FOR 
PART-TIME FULL-TIME RATINGS FOR RATINGS FOR 

ALL RATINGS INSTRUCTORS INSTRUCTORS WoMEN MEN 

ScoREs No. Per Cent No. Per Cent No. Per Cent No. Per Cent No. Per Cent 
---

96-100 30 12.34 17 12.78 13 11.81 14 12.06 16 12.59 
91-95 40 16.46 22 16.54 18 16.36 23 19.82 17 13.38 
86-90 39 16.04 21 15.78 18 16.36 16 13.79 23 18.11 
81-85 32 13.16 14 10.52 18 16.36 17 14.65 15 11.81 
76-80 31 12.75 18 13.53 13 11.81 17 14.65 14 11.02 
71-75 21 8.64 8 6.01 13 11.81 11 9.48 10 7.87 
66-70 19 7.81 13 9.77 6 5.45 7 6.03 12 9.45 
46-65 24 9.87 13 9.77 11 10.00 11 9.48 13 10.23 
26-45 7 2.87 7 5.26 . . . ...... . . . . . . . ... 7 5.51 

---

243 100.00 133 100.00 110 100.00 116 100.00 127 100.00 



4721 College & Research Libraries • November, 1966 

port was given to the instructor on an 
evaluation form, and a copy was kept 
by the administration. 

The study considered separate course 
ratings representing 243 sections taught 
by eighty-four instructors. In analyzing 
these ratings the following questions 
were considered. 

1. What was the range for individual 
instructors' scores? The scores ranged 
from 28 per cent to 100 per cent with 
the mean being 81 per cent shown in 
Table 1. Twenty-nine per cent of the 
ratings were above the 90 per cent lev-
el and an equal number below 75 per 
cent. The widest range for the scores of 
an individual instructor was 47 points, 
from 42 per cent to 89 per cent; how-
ever, the range of most instructors was 
considerably narrower, with the average 
range for instructors rated twice being 
seventeen points and the average for 
those rated three or more times being 
twenty-five points. Only one instructor 
was included in both the best twenty-
five and the poorest twenty-five ratings. 

2. Did a pattern of movement exist in 
the scores of individual instructors or 
the ratings as a whole? At Colorado 
State College of Education a survey of 
ratings taken over a period of years 
found that most instructors made signifi-
cant improvements with successive eval-
uations. 5 Riley cites three other studies 
which found a definite improvement in 
the performance of faculty members.6 At 
Drexel, however, · no such trend was ap-
parent, and while some of the instruc-
tors did receive successively higher rat-
ings, as many received successively low-
er ratings or had such varying scores 
as to show no pattern of movement. 
Therefore, while Drexel faculty mem-
bers on a whole learned their teaching 
weaknesses their resulting teaching 

G W. D. Armentrout, "Relation of Class Size and 
Other Factors to Student Ratings of Teachers," ]ou.mal 
of Teacher Education, I (June 1950), 102. 

s John W. Riley, Pryce F. Ryan, and Marcia Lifshitz, 
The Student Looks at His Teacher (New Brunswick: 
Rutgers University Press, 1950), p. 31. 

seemed no more-or less-effective than 
before. Of course, this generalization 
hides the group which did improve and 
the group which was already very high. 
As a matter of fact, the mean score of 
81 per cent excellent and good was it-
self a quite satisfactory score. But mi-
norities scored low or else had declining 
scores and were not invited to teach 
again. 

TABLE 2. MEAN ScoREs OF FACULTY 
RATINGS BY YEARS AND QUARTERS 

MEAN 
Year: N SCORE 

1960-61 26 81.2 
1961-62 46 80.5 
1962-63 43 83.5 
1963-64 60 80.5 
1964-65 56 76.2 

Quarter: 

Fall 52 79.0 
Winter 54 78.8 
Spring 43 78.3 
Summer 77 82.5 

Table 2 shows that the ratings as a 
whole have recently shown a downward 
trend. While the average ratings for the 
first three years ranged from 80.5 per 
cent to 83.5 per cent, with the academic 
years 1963-64 and 1964-65 the average 
score declined to 76.2 per cent. Whether 
this trend represented an increasingly 
critical and able student body or a some-
what less effective faculty is not clear. 

3. Was there any connection between 
favorability of ratings and time of year? 
In the Colorado State College of ·Educa-
tion survey summer school courses were 
rated higher than those taught during 
the regular college year. 7 The same trend 
was evident at Drexel where summer 
quarter course ratings averaged 82.5 per 
cent while fall, winter, and spring quar-
ter averages were 79 per cent, 78.8 per 
cent, and 78.3 per cent respectively. 

7 "Relation of Class Size and Other Factors •.. ," 
op. cit., p. 102. 



Library School Instructor Evaluation I 473 

TABLE 3. CoMPARISON OF PART-TIME AND FULL-TIME, AND oF 
MALE AND FEMALE INSTRUCTORS 

Mean 
Score 

Ratings: 
Full-Time Instructors 82.8 
Part-Time Instructors 78.9 

Ratings: 
Male Instructors 79.2 
Female Instructors 

I 
81.7 

More striking than a comparison of aver-
age scores, however, was the fact that 
while summer quarter ratings accounted 
for only 28 per cent of all the ratings 
they accounted for 68 per cent of the 
twenty-five highest ratings. 

4. Which groups of instructors scored 
highest? A comparison was made of the 
scores received by women ( 48 per cent 
of all ratings ) and by men (52 per cent) . 
Table 3 shows the mean rating for 
women ( 81.7 per cent) to have been 
slightly but not significantly higher than 
that for men ( 79.2 per cent). Male in-
structors made up half of the top twenty-

PerCent Per Cent 

I 
PerCent 

of All of Highest of Lowest 
Ratings 25 Ratings 25 Ratings 

45 40 32 
55 60 68 

- - -
100 100 100 

52 52 64 
48 48 36 

- - -
100 100 100 

five instructors but two-thirds of the bot-
tom twenty-five instructors. 

A similar comparison was made be-
tween part-time and full-time instruc-
tors. Again the difference was slight, 
with the mean rating for part-time be-
ing 78.9 per cent and for full-time being 
82.2 per cent. Part-time faculty members 
tended somewhat more than full-time to 
scatter to either extreme. They rep-
resented 55 per cent of all ratings but 
had 60 per cent of the top twenty-five 
ratings and 68 per cent of the bottom 
twenty-five. In general, sex and part-
time or full-time status appeared to have 

TABLE 4. PERCENTAGE OF RATINGS FOR WmcH EAcH ATTRIBUTE ScoRED HIGHEST 

ATTRIBUTE 

Effectiveness in putting subject across 
Usual preparation for class . · 
Use of examples 
Stimulation of thought . . . . . 
Tolerance toward student difference of opinion 
Spirit of helpfulness in and out of class 
Has motivated me to do my best work . 
Balance of lectures, class discussion, student 

reports 
Stimulates exchange of ideas 
Assignments reasonable in length . 
Knowledge of and familiarity with subject 
Organization of material 

3 
16 
4 
3 

25 
25 

1 

0 
1 
2 

50 
5 

3 
9 
4 
4 

33 
24 

2 

0 
1 
3 

59 
3 

Per Cent 

4 
23 

4 
3 

16 
27 

0 

0 
0 
1 

39 
7 

2 
14 
3 
3 

30 
32 

0 

0 
0 
3 

48 
3 

5 
18 
5 
4 

19 
18 
2 

0 
1 
1 

52 
7 



474 I College & Research Libraries • November, 1966 

TABLE 5. PERCENTAGE OF RATINGS FOR WHICH EAcH ATTRIBUTE ScoRED LowEsT 

ATTRIBUTE 

Effectiveness in putting subject across 
Usual preparation for class 
Use of examples 
Stimulation of thought . . . . . 
Tolerance toward student difference of opinion 
Spirit of helpfulness in and out of class . 
Has motivated me to do my best work . 
Balance of lectures, class discussion, student 

reports . . . . . . . 
Stimulates exchange of ideas . . 
Assignments reasonable in length . . 
Knowledge of and familiarity with subject 
Organization of material 

little bearing on teaching effectiveness, 
but the interesting clusters at extremes 
are hard . to explain. 

5. In what characteris.tics were in-
structors rated highest? Lowest? The 
strongest characteristic was "knowledge 
of and familiarity with subject," which 
was a strong point on half of the ratings. 

- "Tolerance toward student difference of 
1

' opinion" and "spirit of helpfulness in and 
out of class" were each strong points on 
25 per cent of the courses. Table 4 shows 
no other characteristics to be rated high-
est on more than 10 per cent of the 
courses. 

The weakest characteristics were "or-
ganization of material" ( 31 per cent) , 
"stimulation of thought" ( 29 per cent), 
and "effectiveness in putting subject 
across" ( 18 per cent) as seen in Table 5. 

It is interesting to compare Drexel 
strong and weak points with the results 
of a large-scale rating program carried 
out among undergraduates at Brooklyn 
College and reported by Riley, Ryan, 
and Lifshitz in The Student Looks at His 
Teacher. In the Brooklyn study, as at 
Drexel, the highest scoring characteristic 

18 
9 
0 

29 
11 
3 
5 

6 
4 
7 
1 

31 

25 
11 
0 

29 
5 
4 
6 

8 
2 
8 
1 

33 

PERCENT 

10 
6 

· o 
28 
18 
2 
3 

3 
6 
5 
1 

28 

21 
12 
0 

35 
4 
2 
5 

7 
3 
3 
0 

34 

14 
4 
0 

21 
20 

4 
4 

4 
5 

10 
2 

26 

concerned knowledge of subject matter. 
Similarly, at Brooklyn the poorest scor-
ing characteristic was "encouragement 
of thinking," and at Drexel "stimulation 
of thought" was one of the weakest 
points. Despite these correspondences, 
however, there was a significant differ-
ence between Drexel and Brooklyn in-
structors on "organization of subject 
material" -the third best characteristic of 
ten at Brooklyn, but the weakest at 
Drexel. 8 

There were several differences in the 
weakest and strongest characteristics by 
sex and by full-time status of faculty 
members. For instance, while almost 
one-fourth of the full-time instructor rat-
ings were strong in "usual preparation 
for class," this was a strong point for 
only one-eleventh of the part-time in-
structors who usually had full-time jobs 
elsewhere in addition to their Drexel 
teaching. On the other hand, ratings for 
part-time instructors were 50 per cent 
higher than for full-time on ''knowledge 
~f and familiarity with subject." Stu-
dents also considered part-time instruc-

s Riley, Ryan, and Lifshitz, op. cit., p. 82. 



Library School Instructor Evaluation I 475 

TABLE 6. RATINGS OF TYPES O F CoURsEs 

Type of Course Mean Score 

Reference 81.0 
Library Materials 78.9 
Cataloging . 79.8 
Administration 79.1 
Special Types of Service 82.3 
Backgrounds . 77.0 
Children's Work 88.6 
Information Science 79.8 

Basic Required . . 79.2 
Intermediate Required 79.5 
Electives . . . . 82.0 
Information Science . 79.8 

tors more tolerant of student difference 
of opinion, on a two-to-one ratio. Still 
another significant difference between 
part-time and full-time instructors lay in 
the area of "effectiveness in putting sub-
ject across" which was a strong point for 
one-fourth of the part-time instructors 
but for only one-tenth of the full-time in-
structors. 

An interesting difference between the 
ratings of male and female instructors 
was in "tolerance toward student dif-
ference of opinion." This attribute oc-
curred as a weak point on ratings of fe-
male instructors significantly more often 
than on ratings of males. 

6. Were electives rated higher than re-
quired courses? Although it may seem 
natural for students to have been more 
favorably inclined toward the courses 
they elected to take than toward re-
quired courses, the studies done at 
Brooklyn College9 and at Colorado State 
College of Education10 found no impor-
tant difference here. At Drexel, as shown 
in Table 6, elective courses had a slight 
but not significantly higher mean than 
basic and intermediate required courses . 

8 Ibid. , p. 87. 
10 " Relation of Class Size and Other Factors • . . ," 

op. cit ., p. 102. 

Per Cent P er Cent of P er Cent of 
of All Ra tings Top 25 Ratings Low 25 Ratings 

19 20 24 
15 4 12 
12 8 12 
11 12 8 
14 28 16 
12 4 20 
10 20 0 
7 4 8 

100 100 100 

29 12 28 
25 12 28 
38 72 36 
7 4 8 

100 100 100 

Required courses, however, accounted 
for 54 per cent of all the ratings but only 
24 per cent of the highest twenty-five 
ratings. 

7. Which courses were mos.t highly 
rated? When considering the scores of 
groups of courses the most obvious pat-
tern was the high ratings given to 
courses dealing with library service to 
children and young people in school and 
public libraries. The seven courses in 
this category were offered twenty-five 
times for an average score of 88.5 per 
cent, eight points higher than the over-
all average. Also, special types of li-
brary service, such as medical, law, spe-
cial, college, etc., were unusually well 
represented among the top twenty-five 
courses. It is possible that the somewhat 
more favorable ratings given school and 
children's librarianship courses were re-
lated to the similarly favorable ratings 
given in summer quarters, since during 
summer quarters the percentage of stu-
dents and of courses in school and chil-
dren's librarianship is relatively high. 

For single courses, the highest score 
for a required course rated more than 
ten times was for "Basic Reference 
Materials" with a mean score of 86 per 
cent. The lowest mean score for such a 



476 I College & Research Libraries • November, 1966 

TABLE 7. 25 HIGHEST RATINGS 

<I> 

~ "1:1 
= 

<I> 

::I <I> ·s = ~ a; C' <I> ... <I> u 
0 s ~ ... 

... <I> <I> ... <I> <I> ~ 0 ~ .s ~ ... <I> .!:l ... I 0 0 > V) <I> bO 
.S t: ~ ".d "' ~ t: :§ 0 "' ~ 
.9 ~ 

~ ~ ~ CD ::I c.: 
~ ~ Course ~ u i>< 0 ~ 

----
A F F Advanced Selective Cataloging E 6 . . . •• 0 •••• 100 
c p M Rare Book Librarianship E 9 63 Summer 100 
D p F Workshop . . . . . . E 17 62 Summer 100 
E F F Adult Education and the Library E 14 61 Spring 100 
G p F Advanced Reference • • 0 • • E 4 60 Summer 100 
s p M College and University Library Service E 9 . . . •• •• 0 •• 100 
T F M Methods of Research in Librarianship E 4 60 Summer 100 
B p F Selection of Library Materials . R 19 . . . . . ..... 99 
K p F Folk Literature and Its Oral Presenta-

tion . . . . . E 11 63 Summer 99 
Q p F Library Methods Analysis • • • 0 E 7 62 Summer 99 

DD p F Selection of Library Methods for Chil-
dren E 20 61 Summer 99 

H p M Government Publications E 22 64 Fall 98 
I F M Special Library Service E 13 61 Summer 98 
I F M Special Library Service E 10 63 Winter 98 

cc p M Integration of Science Information 
Systems . . . . . E 5 64 Summer 98 

M p M Introduction to Library Services R 22 61 Summer 98 
w p M College and University Library Service E 23 62 Spring 98 
BB p F Selection of Library Materials for 

Children . . . . . E 14 63 Summer 98 
A F F Cataloging and Classification R 10 . . . • 0 •• 0 •• 97 
G p F Advanced Reference E 8 64 Fall 97 
J F F Selection of Library Materials for 

Young People . . . E 21 . .. • 0 ••••• 97 
I F M Introduction to Library Services R 22 61 Summer 97 
I F M Reference in Science and Technology R 24 ... • •••• 0 0 97 
I F M Reference in Science and Technology R 26 63 Winter 97 
N p F Adult Education and the Library . E 15 62 Summer 97 

course was the 7 4 per cent received by 
"Library in Society," a required course 
on the history and sociology of libraries. 

8. Is there any relationship between 
class size and ratings? Although class 
size was not a significant factor in the 
ratings at Brooklyn11 and Colorado, 12 

small classes at Drexel were rated more 
favorably than large ones, as Tables 7 
and 8 show. The average class size at 
Drexel was twenty, but the average class 
size for the highest twenty-five ratings 
was only 14.2. It should be noted, how-
ever, that the average class size for the 

twenty-five lowest courses-18.76-was 
also somewhat lower than the over-all 
average. The mean score for classes hav-
ing ten or fewer students was 86 per 
cent, compared to the over-all average 
of 81 per cent. While small classes com-
prised only 10 per cent of all ratings, 
they made up 40 per cent of the twenty-
five highest ratings. Furthermore, of all 
small classes, more than half received 
scores of 90 per cent or above. 

u Riley, Ryan, and Lifshitz, op. cit., p. 87. 
12 "Relation of Class Size and Other Factors ... ," 

op. cit., p. 102. 

Library science instructors are faced 
with many teaching problems. In addi-
tion to the fact-mentioned earlier-that 
many of them have had little or no train-
ing in teaching methods, they must 
teach classes made up of students with 



Library School Instructor Evaluation I 477 

TABLE 8 . 25 LowEST RATED CoURsEs 

Cl) 

~ "'Cl ~ 
:3 Cl) '3 = IJ:.. ;;; 0' II) .... II) u 
0 8 p::; .... 

.... II) II) .... II) II) IJ:.. 0 p., .s ~ .... II) 
N .... I 0 0 > v.i II) bl) 

E t: II) ·.o "' .... 1a ~ ;;; 0 ~ 0: ·z 
] 0: 

II) 
Cl) ::l 0: 

p., ~ Course ~ G >< Ql >I:; 
--

v p M Introduction to Cataloging and Classi-
fication R 8 61 Fall 28 

F p M Audio-Visual Materials E 18 62 Spring 34 
p p M College and University Library Service E 23 61 Summer 36 
u p M College and University Library Service E 23 . . . • 0 •• • •• 37 
p p M Selection of Library Materials R 28 61 Summer 37 
0 p M Library Methods Analysis E 13 65 Winter 39 
JJ p M Selection of Library Materials R 15 62 Summer 42 
FF p F Reference in Science and Technology R 12 64 Spring 46 
FF p F Reference in Science and Technology R 24 64 Winter 48 
GG p M Reference in Social Sciences R 25 64 Fall 48 
J p M Science Lit. Searchin~ and Abstracting E 21 . . . . . . .. .. 49 

HH F F History of Books an Printing . . R 9 65 Winter 51 
R p F Introduction of Cataloging and Classi-

fication . . . . R 33 62 Summer 52 
HH F F Reference in Social Sciences R 18 64 Fall 53 
II p M College and University Library Service E 31 65 Spring 54 

HH F F Library Administration R 35 65 Winter 56 
AA p F Search Strategy .. . . . . . E 12 62 Fall 56 
X p M Methods of Research in Librarianship E 19 63 Winter 56 
z F M Reference in Humanities R 26 64 Spring 57 

EE p M Law Librarianship . E 17 62 Spring 58 
T F M Library in Society . R 7 . . . . . ..... 58 
T F M Library in Society . . . R 13 64 Winter 59 
L F F Introduction to Cataloging and Classi-

fication . . . . . . . . R 17 65 Spring 59 
HH F F Methods of Research in Librarianship E 11 65 Winter 60 
y p M Advanced Reference E 11 64 Summer 62 

widely varying backgrounds, library ex-
periences, and goals in librarianship. 
Furthermore, there is the constant prob-
lem of achieving a happy balance be-
tween theory and practice. Add to this 
the lack of adequate textbooks and it 
seems clear that the task facing the li-

brary science instructor is not an easy 
one. At Drexel it is felt that the student 
rating program is an important method 
of helping the instructor do an effective 
job. While ways of improving the rating 
sheets are constantly being sought the 
program itself has proven successful. • •