The influence of student interest on teaching evaluation

To analyze the influence of student subject bias on the evaluation of didactic teaching. Prospective study evaluating the relationship between the interest of junior students in 30 clinical topics and the students' subsequent evaluations of lecturers for these topics. University internal medicine junior core curriculum. 56 junior students. Lecturers were senior internal medicine residents. None. There was no correlation between mean student interest scores for the topics and either immediate or end-of-rotation lecturer evaluation scores (R = -0.14 and 0.09 and p = 0.47 and 0.61, respectively). For 20 of 30 topics (66%) more than 50% of the students assigned the same level of high, intermediate, or low interest. There was no significant difference (p = 0.84) in the mean lecturer evaluation scores for these three divergent groups. Analysis of individual lecturers' evaluation scores revealed stratification to a given range independent of student interest in the topic. Students do not appear to be biased by their degree of interest in a subject when evaluating teaching skills. It appears unlikely that specific teaching assignments need to be considered when evaluating competence in didactic teaching.