Rapport, rigor, and rate my professor: students’ perceptions of hospitality and tourism professors

ABSTRACT

Student evaluation is a common measure used to assess the quality of an instructor’s teaching. However, the results of traditional student evaluation scores are often not available to students, thus students seek out other platforms to learn about professors that they have in mind as instructors for their future courses. Little is known about students’ evaluations of instructors on public, online teacher-rating websites, especially in the hospitality and tourism field. The purpose of this study was to explore hospitality and tourism students’ perceptions of instructors and their teaching effectiveness based on students’ comments and ratings. Results showed that hospitality and tourism students speak positively of their instructors and courses and rated them to be helpful, high in quality, and precise. The comments posted by students were also closely related to students’ perceptions on overall quality, helpfulness, clarity, and easiness.