Instructor's Viewpoints about the Teacher Evaluation System and the Influencing Factors at the Faculty of Dentistry, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Today, performance evaluation has become a ubiquitous and essential process in all organizations. Such evaluations are of paramount importance at higher education institutes, which mainly focus on the improvement of the education process. Each year, the School of Dentistry of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) facilitates teacher performance evaluations by the students, instructors, managers, and personnel, and the obtained results are presented to the instructors. The aim of this study was to assess the instructors’ opinions at MUMS School of Dentistry regarding factors affecting teaching quality assessment.
This descriptive study was conducted during 2009-2010 academic years at MUMS School of Dentistry. A valid and reliable questionnaire consisting of three parts was designed in accordance with the research objectives. Part I contained the demographic information of the instructors, and part II included questions about the instructors’ feedback to the evaluation scores and the importance of the scores to different individuals and sources. Part III consisted of questions regarding factors affecting the evaluation scores from the instructors’ perspective. The collected data were analyzed and compared by Friedman test (α=0.05).
More than half of the instructors believed that there was a moderate relationship between the assessment scores and the reality of teaching methods. Regarding the importance of scores announced by various sources, 46.2% (n=30) of the instructors gave value to the residents’ opinions. Among factors affecting the evaluation scores from the instructors’ perspective, “mastery over the course content” and “renewal of teaching methods” was the first and last priorities, respectively (P To reach better and more realistic results in performance evaluations, improvement of evaluation tools and implementation processes is recommended. Since comprehensive understanding of the course content is the most important factor in increasing the evaluation scores from the instructors’ viewpoint, it is important that their knowledge be improved through participating in training workshops, seminars, and discussion meetings, as well as studying the available literature.