Nursing students' evaluation of classroom teaching: developing and testing an instrument

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Educational Measurement
• Health Professions Education

Background:

• Existing instruments for evaluating classroom teaching often do not meet the specific needs of contemporary nursing colleges.
• There is a need for a reliable and valid tool to assess faculty teaching effectiveness in modern nursing curricula.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and test a new instrument for student completion to evaluate the effectiveness of faculty classroom teaching in a contemporary nursing college.
• To assess the reliability and validity of the newly developed teaching evaluation instrument.

Main Methods:

• Instrument development involved a literature review and expert content feedback.
• The study employed a methodological approach to assess reliability and validity.
• Data were collected from four midwestern nursing schools, involving 233 participants for internal consistency and 35 for test-retest reliability.

Main Results:

• The instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency with a coefficient alpha of .98.
• Test-retest reliability was high, with r = .85 (p < .001).
• Factor analysis identified a single dominant factor explaining 60% of the variance, representing effective classroom teaching traits/methods.

Conclusions:

• The developed instrument is a reliable and valid tool for evaluating nursing faculty classroom teaching effectiveness.
• This instrument addresses a gap in current evaluation tools for contemporary nursing education.
• The findings support the use of this instrument in modern nursing college settings to enhance teaching quality.