Edu Discoveries. Why the highest-rated classes don’t always mean great teaching?
There is a substantial body of research showing that participant satisfaction and long-term learning outcomes can sometimes be two very different things.
Student evaluations and post-training surveys can make more than a few of us feel our hearts racing. Have you ever put an enormous amount of effort into your classes, spent nights coming up with great learning activities, stayed up late providing detailed feedback, and still received feedback that felt undeservedly cold?
Well, here's something that might make you feel a little better: there is plenty of research showing that participant satisfaction and long-term learning outcomes can sometimes be two different things.
One interesting example comes from a study conducted at Bocconi University in Milan, involving more than 1,200 students across 230 class groups. The researchers found that instructors whose students went on to achieve better academic results did not necessarily receive higher teaching evaluations.
The Illusion of Fluency, or the Siren Song of Charisma
In 1970, three researchers from the University of Southern California hired an actor and introduced him as Dr. Myron L. Fox. He delivered a lecture on a complex medical topic, deliberately packed with meaningless concepts and anecdotes. Yet the speaker was remarkably witty, energetic, and expressive. Surprisingly, the audience, made up of well-educated professionals, rated the lecture as highly valuable and informative.
As we can see, a captivating presentation style can sometimes pull the wool over our eyes.
Even more fascinating is what we might call the Deslauriers paradox. Research conducted at Harvard showed that students who participated in active, demanding classes objectively learned more, but… subjectively felt they had learned less than students attending a smooth, traditional lecture. The experiment involved 149 students.
Why? Because cognitive effort is not particularly comfortable. This relates to the concept of desirable difficulties, which suggests that learning methods requiring greater effort can lead to more durable retention and a deeper understanding of knowledge. As it turns out, it is precisely this effort that can help learning stick.
In the literature, the relationship between students' grades and their evaluations of a course is explained in several ways.
The first explanation is the grading leniency hypothesis, according to which higher grades awarded to students or lower levels of difficulty may lead to more favourable course evaluations. Unfortunately, when student evaluation results are strongly linked to an instructor's performance assessment, there may be a temptation to lower academic standards.
The second explanation is the validity hypothesis, which suggests that well-taught courses genuinely support learning and may therefore lead to both better student performance and higher course evaluations. Such a positive correlation can also occur, and it is worth keeping in mind.
The third explanation draws on psychological mechanisms, such as attribution bias. Students may interpret their successes as evidence of their abilities while being more likely to attribute failures to external factors, such as the instructor, difficult course content, or unfair assessment.
What Makes Students and Training Participants Give Us Top Marks?
Looking across studies on teaching evaluations, we can identify several key factors that can significantly boost our ratings.
Not all of them are surprising, but taken together, they show that high course evaluations depend on far more than how much someone has actually learned.
Number ten: Whether the course or training topic is optional.
Elective courses and freely chosen training sessions often receive higher ratings than difficult compulsory courses, particularly in science and technical subjects. A simple tendency to justify our own choices may also play a role: if I chose this course myself, I may be more inclined to see it as worthwhile.
Number nine: Clearly communicated expectations.
We like knowing what is expected of us, what task we need to complete, and what counts as a good result. Uncertainty increases frustration, even when the course itself is well designed.
Number eight: Fair and predictable assessment.
Students may accept high expectations if they understand the rules of the game and feel that those rules apply equally to everyone.
Number seven: Feeling that the instructor genuinely cares about me.
Students tend to evaluate courses more positively when they feel noticed, treated with respect, and genuinely supported in their development. Sometimes, it comes down to very small things: an instructor remembers someone's name, recalls a previous conversation, or follows up on a question asked the week before.
Number six: The perceived usefulness of the course.
When we can see a connection between what we are learning and our own lives or future careers, it becomes easier to accept the effort involved.
The problem is that learning outcomes often take time to reveal their value. During a course, we may not yet be able to judge how useful a particular piece of knowledge will turn out to be a year or two later.
Number five: Flexibility, autonomy, and responsiveness to students' needs.
Sometimes, however, we want contradictory things: choice, but not necessarily the overwhelming burden of making decisions; flexibility, but also structure. We want freedom, yet sometimes we also need deadlines to help us get things done.
Number four: Feeling that we have learned a lot.
Yet we should remember that the smoothest and most comfortable learning experiences can sometimes make us feel that we have learned a great deal, while demanding activities expose gaps in our understanding and, paradoxically, lower our subjective assessment of how much we have learned.
Number three: A sense of psychological safety and an approachable instructor.
Students particularly value instructors who are open and approachable, creating an environment where they can ask questions without worrying about an unexpected negative reaction. Fear of embarrassment can seriously limit participation, even when the academic quality of the course is very high.
Number two: Lower expectations, easier assessments, and better grades.
Many researchers have pointed out that higher grades, or simply being satisfied with one's grade, can influence how students evaluate a course.
Put simply: "I liked that course because I did well in it."
And finally, number one: Charisma and genuine enthusiasm for the subject.
We generally like people who speak in an engaging, fluent, energetic, and humorous way.
The problem is that, as Dr. Fox demonstrated, an attractive presentation does not always come with valuable content.
In short, the highest-rated courses are often those that give students a sense of clarity, safety, purpose, autonomy, success, and an enjoyable learning experience. But not all of these elements necessarily translate into deep learning.
What Can We Do Instead of Lowering the Bar?
So what can we do as educators to help participants appreciate the effort we put into teaching?
One solution may be something we often forget because it seems so obvious to us: taking a moment during class to thoughtfully explain why we use particular teaching methods.
It also helps to summarise what students have learned and explain how that knowledge or skill may benefit them in the future.
Here are a few practical suggestions:
Explain the purpose of the effort students are making. Help them understand the processes involved in cognitively demanding activities. It is worth showing that a certain level of difficulty is a natural part of learning.
Include short summaries of learning gains. For example, at the end of a session, highlight what learners have gained. This helps them recognise progress that may have been easy to overlook during the class itself.
Whenever possible, connect learning to practical applications. Students tend to engage more deeply in tasks when they can see their purpose and usefulness. I have even written a rule into one of my presentations: show at least one concrete example of how the knowledge can be applied in real life.
Show the difference between "I understand" and "I can do it". Explain why it is so valuable for learners to attempt tasks independently, make mistakes, and improve their solutions. Short, ungraded quizzes can also help students check their understanding without adding unnecessary stress.
I would add one more thing: it is worth carefully reconsidering how we collect feedback from our students and training participants.
If we only ask, "What did you like?", we mainly find out what people liked.
But we could also ask: "What was important to you?", "What was missing?", or "What could we leave out?"
Questions like these can provide much more valuable insights into how to improve the quality of our teaching.
To sum up, our role as educators is to be wise guides who do not carry the backpack for the hiker, but instead show them why the effort of climbing a high mountain is worthwhile.
American education researcher George Kuh argued that some of the most valuable educational experiences are those that require substantial effort from students and set high expectations, presenting a genuine academic challenge.
Although students may initially complain about the workload and difficulties, years later they often remember such experiences as among the most valuable of their educational lives.
Finally, let us remember that positive student evaluations are a valuable source of information, but they should not be treated as the only evidence of effective teaching.
Learning can sometimes be tiring, frustrating, and demanding. But when that effort has a purpose and leads to visible progress, it becomes an experience that leaves us a little tired, perhaps, but also a little wiser.
The author of the article is Alina Guzik
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