Hypothesis Identification Article Analysis

According to study the purpose was to determine a bias between online and face-to-face courses for students. An evaluation called SET (Student Evaluations of Teaching) was to assess the effectiveness of instruction and not the bias of outside the instructor's control. There were several biases that made the student evaluation bias. This included academic discipline, class size, content area, expected grade, level of course, student motivation, teacher personality, type of course requirements, and course delivery.

The research was mainly focusing on primarily on traditional instruction. There were several researchers finding that the SET was lower on the online instruction than face-to-face instruction. The methods between the two had no difference when it came to students learning.

A bias is defined according to the study,

"A characteristics of instructor, course, or student that affects SET, either positive or negatively, but is unrelated to the criteria of a good teaching."(Centra & Gaubatz), (p4)

The hypothesis of this case study was to examine the difference between how students evaluate instructional effectiveness as compared to the face-to-face students. In this study there were also other hypotheses that lead to potential biases.(p5) Five of the characteristics were the student, the course, the instructor, the SET instrument, and the administration of the SET instrument.

The characteristic of the student was pertaining to grades, gender, part time vs. full time etc.

The characteristics of the course was class meeting time, elective vs. required, level of course, class size, academic discipline, and the workload/difficulty.

The characteristic of instructor was academic rank, enthusiasm, gender, personality, race, reputation, and research productively.

The