Evaluation of a First-Year Course Using Factor Analysis

Kobe Tokiwa University witnessed its 1st university reform in 2015. This resulted in the start of a basic education based first-year course from the year 2017. The course was taught by 20 teachers to an approximate 320 students. Kobe Tokiwa University constructed the course based on 19 Tokiwa competencies. In order to evaluate the students, who are evaluated by the 20 teachers based on Tokiwa competencies, we constructed a rubric and an evaluation matrix for the first-year course. Our study attempts to address the following research question: Is our evaluation matrix, which is based on the Tokiwa competencies used by teachers to evaluate the students in the 2018 first-year course, a good evaluation tool. To answer this research question, we performed a factor analysis of the evaluation of students by using an evaluation matrix for the 2018 first-year course. The results show that our evaluation is not based on the Tokiwa competencies. Therefore, we constructed a new evaluation matrix for the first-year course. We will make further investigations in the future to check whether this new evaluation matrix is a good method or not.