Instructor reputation and student ratings of instruction

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between instructor reputation, as perceived by students, and student evaluations of the instr uctor and course. A total of 754 students from 39 classes participated in t he study. Based on what students claimed to have heard about the instructor prior to enrolling in the course, they were classified into one of three g roups: positive reputation, no information. and negative reputation. Using these groupings, two analyses were performed. In the first, mean overall ra tings for thin instructor and course were calculated and presented by class . In the second, both instructor and course ratings were modeled using mult ilevel regression. Results show large mean differences in both instructor a nd course ratings between the positive and negative reputation groups. More specifically, students who heard positive information regarding the instru ctor's reputation rated both the instructor and course higher than students who heard negative information about the instructor. (C) 2001 Academic Pre ss.