Many institutions now gather student feedback for formative and, more so, for summative purposes. Various studies have been done on the validity of student ratings (Millman, 1981, Centra, 1987), and findings have been both positive (Aleamoni and Hexner, 1980; McKeachie, 1979; Marsh, 1984) and negative (Trout, 1997; Wilson, 1998). Some major concerns are that students may not be able to make valid judgements because of their immaturity, lack of experience and capriciousness, and student evaluation may be little more than a popularity contest favouring the friendly, humorous and easy-graders. Also, student ratings may be affected by extraneous variables such as class size, gender of the student and teacher, whether the course is required or an elective, whether the student is a major or non-major in the field, the level of the course, and the rank of the teacher, the grades/marks the student expect to receive, or actually receive (as continual assessment). An arguably more fundamental question is whether such information is meaningful. When a high rating is given, what does it mean? Perhaps more important, what does it tell us of student learning, and how may it be used to help improve teaching and the learning experience?

The quantitative comments provide a rich source of information which often is not fully utilised as it is not easy to process. This study is based on a campus-wide project that attempts to relate the quantitative and qualitative feedback to ascertain what students regard as characteristics of a good/poor teacher and effective/ineffective teaching and to what extent these correlate with good learning. Student feedback, both quantitative and qualitative for the highest-ranked 20% and the lowest-ranked 20% of the faculty was scrutinised. SPSS Text Analyser was used to identify words describing teacher characteristics and teaching effectiveness, both positive and negative descriptors. Unlike the standard survey in which students would be prompted to formulate a hypothetical image of good teacher and teaching, this approach aims to provide much truer information and to derive “models” of what students regard as good teachers and effective teaching and create individual teacher profiles based on positive and negative descriptors. This would help to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an individual teacher, prompt teachers to take corrective measures where indicated and adapt their teaching to maximise learning, It could also serve to signal the need to ‘educate’ students on what constitutes good teaching and learning and, hopefully, enable them to optimise their learning experience.