A comparison of student evaluations of teaching between online and face-to-face courses

The literature contains indications of a bias in student evaluations of teaching (SET) against online instruction compared to face-to-face instruction. The present case study consists of content analysis of anonymous student responses to open-ended SET questions submitted by 534 students enrolled in 82 class sections taught by 41 instructors, one online and one face-to-face class section for each instructor. There was no significant difference in the proportion of appraisal text segments by delivery method, suggesting no delivery method bias existed. However, there were significant differences in the proportion of text segments for topical themes and topical categories by delivery method. Implications of the findings for research and practice are presented.