Forecasting the student-professor matches that result in unusually effective teaching.

BACKGROUND: Two important influences on students' evaluations of teaching are relationship and professor effects. Relationship effects reflect unique matches between students and professors such that some professors are unusually effective for some students, but not for others. Professor effects reflect inter-rater agreement that some professors are more effective than others, on average across students. AIMS: We attempted to forecast students' evaluations of live lectures from brief, video-recorded teaching trailers. SAMPLE: Participants were 145 college students (74% female) enrolled in introductory psychology courses at a public university in the Great Lakes region of the United States. METHODS: Students viewed trailers early in the semester and attended live lectures months later. Because subgroups of students viewed the same professors, statistical analyses could isolate professor and relationship effects. RESULTS: Evaluations were influenced strongly by relationship and professor effects, and students' evaluations of live lectures could be forecasted from students' evaluations of teaching trailers. That is, we could forecast the individual students who would respond unusually well to a specific professor (relationship effects). We could also forecast which professors elicited better evaluations in live lectures, on average across students (professor effects). Professors who elicited unusually good evaluations in some students also elicited better memory for lectures in those students. CONCLUSIONS: It appears possible to forecast relationship and professor effects on teaching evaluations by presenting brief teaching trailers to students. Thus, it might be possible to develop online recommender systems to help match students and professors so that unusually effective teaching emerges.

Influence of the direction of eye turn on the appearance of strabismus.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether an equal amount of exotropia (XT) or esotropia (ET) produces a more noticeable eye turn, which gives the better impression of eye contact, and how a positive angle kappa (K) affects this judgment. METHODS: Images from a white male model were manipulated to simulate 0, 5, 10, and 15° of ET and XT for both 0 and +5° K. A series of image pairs was then created that juxtaposed XT and ET of equal angles for both 0 and +5° K. Forty-five optometry students then judged which image in each pair appeared to have the greater tropia and which gave the greater impression of eye contact. RESULTS: When angle kappa was 0, there was no significant difference in whether XT or ET appeared to be more noticeable. However, when angle kappa was +5°, an XT of 5° or greater became more apparent than an equal ET (p < 0.001). However, when the criterion was eye contact, ET gave the greater impression that eye contact was being made when the deviation was 10° or more, and this was true for both 0 and +5° K (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: When a strabismus is to be evaluated or corrected purely for cosmetic reasons, the results may differ depending on the value of angle kappa and whether the criterion for good cosmesis is ocular deviation or eye contact.