Abstract
This study assessed the effect of students’ characteristics and perceptions on the students’ evaluation of teaching (SET). Students’ evaluation of teaching is a process in which the teacher’s performance is evaluated by the students. Questionnaires were distributed among 121 students of the University of Burao who were studying principles of Macroeconomics under the instruction of the same lecturer. At the end of the mid-term, students were told to evaluate their lecturer based on ten aspects of teaching; besides, the students were asked to answer some questions that were measuring seven students’ characteristics and perceptions that could affect SET. These seven perceptions and characteristics of the students were gender, age, student’s interest in the course, expected grade, student’s English level, student’s overall grade, and student’s perceptions of the SET. Out of these seven characteristics and perceptions of the students, only age affected the scores that students gave to their lecturer. However, the direction of the relationship was not clear because the result shows that on average young students and older students gave higher scores to the lecturer than those of middle age. Finally, the study recommended that SET not be considered a valid method of evaluating lecturers’ performance since other unrelated factors like age can affect the rating.
Keywords: Student perception, student characteristics, student evaluation of teaching.
