Common Areas for Improvement in Physical Science Units That Have Critically Low Student Satisfaction

Abstract

Course and teaching evaluation questionnaires (CTEQs) have become standard practice in Australian universities to evaluate teaching and student experiences. National results have shown that ratings of disciplines in the physical sciences (Information Technology, Engineering and Science) generally perform poorly on the CTEQs compared to other disciplines. In this paper, a thematic analysis of the students' feedback was undertaken for units in physical science cluster that students experienced as needing critical attention. These units were delivered in semester 2, 2010 at Monash University. The analysis has revealed that the top three concerns for students across the physical science disciplines are lecturer presentation, lecture content and unit organization. These findings are consistent with those from over 35 years ago despite changes in student demographics, advances in learning theory and technological advances used in the delivery of course content.