A preliminary study on teaching quality assessment from the perspective of “students as customers ”
Higher education differs from country to country, region to region, and institution to institution. Despite the differences, the majority of higher education institutions aim at providing a good quality learning environment to their students. To achieve this goal, these institutions would employ high quality teachers, develop good quality and most up-to-date curriculum, and provide good teaching/learning facilities and environment to their students. To understand how effective these “services” are, institutions would use teaching evaluation as the means to collect feedback on their teaching service quality. In spite of its long history, it is questionable whether these assessments are truly reflecting students' perception on teaching quality as well as their satisfaction toward teaching performance. Built on top of PZB's SERVQUAL service quality measurement instrument, a set of teaching evaluation instrument was developed. 50 questionnaires of a pilot test were collected and results reveal that the five PZB service quality dimensions, except empathy and tangible dimensions, have statistical significant impact on students' satisfaction toward their teachers' teaching performance, while, overall satisfaction toward courses are influenced by students' satisfaction to their teachers and the PZB tangible dimension. Based on the preliminary findings, suggestions are made to educational practitioners to further improve their teaching service quality.