The influence of student feedback in higher education through the eyes of instructors

Instructors’ performance evaluation has been a long-standing topic of controversy in higher-education settings across the world. In line with recent trends in higher education quality practices, which emerged as a consequence of globalization, many questions still remain unanswered concerning the preparation, implementation and use of instructors’ performance evaluations which have become critical components of accountability mechanisms towards stakeholders. Instructors’ performance is evaluated against a number of criteria and through a number of means, student feedback being the most prominent. This study explores instructors’ perceptions regarding the effect of student feedback on their teaching practices and quality of teaching and whether and how student feedback guides instruction and methodology of teaching in the actual classroom setting. It presents findings from a questionnaire devised by Floden (2017) where general scanning technique was applied to collect data from instructors who are in different career phases in a Turkish state university, where student evaluations of teaching have been utilized within the scope of instructor performance evaluations for more than a decade as part of international accreditation procedures. In total, 86 instructors took part in the study and the results of the questionnaire were compared with those of the original instrument. The major findings indicate that student feedback affects instructors’ teaching practices to a high extent and it contributes to improvement of teaching quality. In addition, student feedback influences the amount of material covered and instructors’ tendency towards the share of traditional lectures.