Carell 2010 Does Professor Quality Matter

Question 1

What are the key concepts?

Answer 1

• Professor and course relation in quality

Question 2

Variables that are constant

Answer 2

Most variables held are either held constant or controlled for - the teaching isn’t constant - this is the variability

Question 3

What questions did they set to answer

Answer 3

Does experience of a professor change the success of students even though they are given the same test at the end of the year

Question 4

How did they conduct the study

Answer 4

Procedure

setting:
- Air force academy
- All Ss are required to take a core set of 30 courses
- Ss randomly assigned to
- Course
- Professor

• Within each course, identical syllabi and exams across faculty
  
  • Faculty have access to exams in advance
  • All faculty for a course share responsibility for grading
  • randomly assigned to the next course (main course, then they are assigned to a subsequent course)
  • ^ this cuts out variability in all students and courses
• Coursed examines
  
  • Intro to calc = “contemporaneous course”
  • Subsequent courses that require into calculus
• 2820 course sections taught by 421 dif faculty members

Question 5

What are the results: Performance

Answer 5

• Ss of less experienced/qualified professors perform slightly better in the contemporaneous coursemaybe…..
• new prof are motivated to work harder
• good learner has nothing to do with having a lot og experience or having an advanced degree
• OR… new prof did more teaching to the test
• Ss of more experienced/qualified professors perform significantly better in the subsequent courseMaybe
  • they had more experience with what be experienced later

Question 6

Results: Student Evaluations of Professors

Answer 6

• Student evaluations of congenerous course were:
  
  • Positively correlated with contemporaneous course performance
    
    • Ss gave high evaluations of calc when they got good gradres in calc and low evaluations when they got bad grades
• Negatively correlated with performance in subsequent coursers
  - high evaluations of calc were associated with a lack of preparation for subsequent courses
  - low evaluation of calc were associated with good preparation for subsequent courses

Question 7

Less Experienced Prof.

Answer 7

• Prof. teaches to the test
• Ss does well in the course
• Ss likes the course
  
  • Give course positive evaluation
• Ss doesn’t do well in subsequent course( next level of courses)

Question 8

More experienced Prof

Answer 8

• Prof doesn’t teach to test
• Ss doesn’t do as well in course
• Ss doesn’t like the course
  
  • Bad evaluation
• Ss does well in Subsequent course