Student Course Evaluation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Inquiry into Faculty Perceptions

Achieving excellence in teaching is tightly germane to high quality in higher education. In order to safeguard the quality of teaching activities at higher education institutions, particularly universities, a wide range of methods have so far been used. In the literature, student course evaluation appears as one of the most frequently consulted way of assessing the quality and effectiveness of teaching activities engaged by the university professors. This endeavor is enhanced through the administration of course evaluation questionnaires by end of each academic semester. Its use dating back to as early as the 1920s (Cashin, 1989), consulting students’ perceptions to evaluate the courses is considered a cheap means for gathering and providing valuable information (Serdyukova, Tatum, & Serdyukov, 2010). In this approach to course evaluation, students who are in direct contact with the instructors for long hours are