Assessing the teaching and learning performance of English freshmen writing courses by applying Data Envelopment Analysis and Management Matrix.

Abstract

In a country like Taiwan, where Chinese is the official language, many students struggle to improve their English writing skills. The system of students` ratings of teachers at the end of each semester can provide valuable information concerning students` opinions. This paper selects 50 classes of freshmen following writing courses in a university of Taiwan from 2004 to 2006. We adopted the data envelopment analysis to identify the relative performance efficiencies of each class. This research proposed a management matrix of the selected classes` performance with 4 quadrants which could help them to know in what quadrant they are located. The results of this paper, which were expected to reveal that only a few classes are efficient, could help to provide some concrete and practical learning and teaching strategies for the classes with lower average scores.