Assessment strategies: what is being measured in student course evaluations?

In developing classroom teaching strategies, it is important for the accounting instructors to obtain feedback that allows them to adjust their teaching methods to fully meet the needs of their students. One important form of feedback comes from students' course evaluations. These course assessment instruments are used in promotion and tenure decisions as well as to provide faculty with feedback about the success of their teaching methods. Currently, students' evaluations represent the primary means used by most accounting programmes to assess their accounting courses. For this reason, it is important to determine the feedback provided from these evaluations to improve teaching methods. Two paradigms for learning are considered in this paper along with their underlying learning activities. Then, a qualitative review of course evaluations collected from a sample of 267 US accounting programmes is used in developing a theory of assessment consequences.