Analyzing Student Evaluations of Teaching in a Completely Online Environment

Abstract

Almost all educational institutions have shifted their academic activities to digital platforms due to the recent COVID-19 epidemic. Because of this, it is very important to assess how well teachers are performing with this new way of online teaching. Educational Data Mining (EDM) is a new field that emerged from using data mining techniques to analyze educational data and making decision based on findings. EDM can be utilized to gain better understanding about students and their learning processes, assist teachers do their academic tasks, and make judgments about how to manage educational system. The primary objective of this study is to uncover the key factors that influence the quality of teaching in a virtual classroom environment. Data is gathered from the students’ evaluation of teaching from computer science students of three online semesters at X University. In total, 27622 students participated in these survey. Weka, sentimental analysis, and word cloud generator are applied in the process of carrying out the research. The decision tree classifies the factors affecting the performance of the teachers, and we find that student-faculty relation is the most prominent factor for improving the teaching quality. The sentimental analysis reveals that around 78% of opinions are positive and “good” is the most frequently used word in the opinions. If the education system is moved online in the future, this research will help figure out what needs to be changed to improve teachers’ overall performance and the quality of their teaching.