It's in the Syllabus: The Relationship Between Syllabi Word Use and Teaching Evaluations

Abstract

The authors analyzed 1,472 course syllabi written by 611 professors to determine whether communion-related and/or agency-related word use in professors’ syllabi predicted those same professors’ end-of-semester teaching evaluations. Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) analyses revealed that professors who used more communal language—including third person plural pronouns (e.g., we), social words (e.g., discussion), and positive emotion words (e.g., please)—received significantly higher teaching evaluations, but agentic language did not significantly predict evaluation scores.