Study on Characteristics of Efficient Professors – From the Perspectives of IS-VNU Students

Among the factors that have significant impact on student’ satisfaction, the quality of teaching staffs, particularly lecturers or professors 39 , has been explored in many studies as on[r]

Study on Characteristics of Efficient Professors –

From the Perspectives of IS-VNU Students

Group sciences: Bế Ngọc Phương Mai

Hồ Thanh PhươngPhạm Ngọc Lê Huy

Hà Anh Class: IB2015C, IB2015GScience advisor: Dr Đoàn Thu Trang

I Introduction

The significant increase in both number and sizes of higher educational institutions inVietnam in recent years has clearly made the higher education industry morecompetitive This forces universities and colleges to pay more attention on meeting therequirements and satisfaction of students – their major customers Students’satisfaction is important to higher educational institutions as it not only reflects theeducational services but is also closely related to the growth of the institutions.Satisfied students may attract new students by getting involved in positive word-of-mouth communication with their friends and family members In addition, satisfiedstudents may also come back and enroll in other courses provided by the institutions[CITATION Guo99 \m Sch04 \l 1033 ] The necessity of understanding students’satisfaction and its determinants is even more substantial to Vietnam high educationalinstitutions as in a recent study on 105 students of a Vietnam university,Pham[CITATION Lie17 \n \t \l 1033 ] found that only about 26% of students in thesample feel satisfied while 35% of them feel dissatisfied with their enrollment at theuniversity Moreover, 40% of students in the sample refused to recommend theuniversity to their family members and friends Surprisingly, while some Vietnamuniversities conduct annual surveys to collect feedback from students on theireducational services, not many academic studies focus intensively on factorsinfluencing students’ satisfaction (Pham, 2017)

Among the factors that have significant impact on student’ satisfaction, the quality ofteaching staffs, particularly lecturers or professors39, has been explored in many studies

as one of the most important determinants[CITATION Hil03 \m Poz00 \l 1033 ].In thehigher education industry, if universities are regarded as service providers andknowledge and skills are standard services that they offer, professors canbeperceivedas the middle men who deliver lectures, involving knowledge and skills, tothe customers that are students Therefore, the quality, behaviors and attitudes ofprofessors and their lectures should play a key role in determining the level ofstudents’ satisfaction As suggested by Gruber, Reppel & Voss [CITATION Gru10 \n \t \l 1033 ], the more effective the professor is, the more satisfied students will be

39 In this study, the terms “professors” and “lecturers” are used interchangeably and are both referred to

lecturers

However, the perception of an “effective professor” may vary among professors andstudents What professors consider to be “effective” and good for students may notreally be effective from the students’ opinions Therefore, insights on what studentsexpect an “effective professor” will offer many practical implications to highereducational institutions These understanding and knowledge may not only helplecturers to improve their own teaching quality but also assist the university inbuilding a set of criteria for teaching staffs and facilitate the recruitment procedure.Taking into account all of the above arguments, we devote this research to explore thequestion: “What are the characteristics of effective professors, from the perspective ofstudents?” To answer this question, we apply Kano model, a methodology developed

by professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s This method allows us to investigate whichcomponents of products and services influence customer satisfaction, and moreimportantly, their different influential roles in determining customer satisfaction (Kano

et al 1984, Sauerwein, et al 1996) Prior literature suggests that customer satisfactionwas mainly considered as one-dimensional construction, i.e., the higher the perceivedproduct quality, the higher the customer’s satisfaction However, in many cases,fulfilling an individual product or service requirement maynot lead to equal increase incustomer satisfaction Kano solved this problem by introducing a new method, whichcategorized determinants of customer satisfaction into three different categories

First,must-be requirements are considered to be prerequisites by the customers.

Fulfilling these requirements are necessary and obvious, hence, will not increasecustomer satisfaction However, if these requirements are not fulfilled, the customers

will be extremely dissatisfied Second, one-dimensional requirements are explicitly

demanded by the customers Higher level of fulfillment of these requirements will

result in higher customer satisfactionand vice versa Third, attractive requirements are

not explicitly demanded by the customers but will have the greatest impact oncustomer satisfaction As customers do not ask for them, if these requirements aremissing, customers will not be dissatisfied However, fulfilling these requirements willlead to significant satisfaction from customer

We suggest that applying Kano method in our study will provide an extensive answer

to our research question As Kano method distinguishes characteristics of effective

professors into three different categories, we will know which characteristics are the

prerequisites that professors should have as a must (i.e.,must-be requirements) In addition, characteristics that fall into the category of attractive requirements should

gain particular attention from both professors and universities as they can significantlyincrease students’ satisfaction Moreover, since SERVQUAL has been the popularmodel applied in studies in Vietnam on determinants of customers’ satisfaction, wehope that our research will encourage more studies to investigate indicators of theteaching quality in high educational systemswith different methods to make theresearch stream more diverse and prosperous

We conduct this research in the context of International School – Vietnam NationalUniversity (IS-VNU) A questionnaire, designed following Kano method style, wassent out to 143 IS-VNU students in different study programs and school years.Findings from the analysis indicate that: First, three factors that are most influential tostudents’ satisfaction are “expertise”, “sense of humor”, and “good presentation skills”.Second, although “reliability” does not have a significant impact on students’satisfaction, the lack of this characteristic can cause severe disappointment to students.Last, “approachability” and “empathy” are the two requirements that have relativelyhigh coefficients in both satisfaction and dissatisfaction We hope that this paper willdeliver to the readers better understandings on students’ requirements on their “ideallecturer” In addition, using findings from this study, IS-VNU can make meaningfuladaptation to the current teaching programs, curriculum, teaching methods and so on

to better satisfy students’ expectation

The remaining of the paper proceeds as follows Section 2 provides theoreticalbackground on higher education as a service and satisfaction in higher education Inthis section, we also describe the important role of professors in determining highereducational quality as well as findings on the characteristics of an effective professorfrom prior research Kano method is explained in details in section 3, followed by theset of proposed characteristics of effective professors in section 4 Section 5 and 6presents data collection, data analyses and empirical results Section 6 discusses andconcludes

II Literature review

1 Educational servicequality and Satisfaction in higher education

Higher education has long been considered as a complex service in many prior studies(e.g., Curran & Rosen[CITATION Curran \n \t \l 1033 ];Davis &Swanson[CITATION Davis \n \t \l 1033 ];Eagle & Brennan[CITATION Eag \n \t \l

1033 ]; Hennig-Thurau[CITATION Hen01 \n \t \l 1033 ]) As educational services aremainly intangible, the professor’s teaching efforts are “produced” by professor and

“consumed” by students[CITATION Sha951 \l 1033 ] On the one hand, educationalservice has several characteristics that are similar to a normal service For instance,each student has his/her demands or requirements for contents of lectures or attributes

of his/her professor, whichis the same asrequirements from the customers for theservice provider However, on the other hand, there are some differences betweeneducational service and other services First,students are rather “partners” than

“customers” in this kind of service Unlike several other services such as eating inrestaurant, traveling by bus or sleeping in a hotel, in educational service, students ascustomers must take a huge responsibility for their own education and cannot justconsume what they receive from professor, university or any higher educationalinstitutions as the service provider[CITATION Sve07 \l 1033 ].Moreover, students arealso considered as “co-creators of the value” as the success of the educational service’s

“products” depends on both professors and students, as service provider andcustomers[CITATION Coo07 \m Var04 \t \m Var06 \n \t \l 1033 ] Under theguidance of one professor, the students with different levels of knowledge-acquiringability will have very different learning outcomes In short, no matter which rolethestudents play in the educational service, i.e., as “partners” or “co-creators of value”,they have significant contribution in creating a valuable learning experience in generaland good teaching quality in particular

As educational service has been becoming increasingly competitive in recentdecades, the quality of higher education was serious taken into account by highereducational institutions Prior research suggests that quality in higher education is veryhard to be defined and measured because each and every stakeholder in educationalservice, namely students, professors, universities, government and so on, regardsquality different depending on their interests[CITATION Har93 \l 1033 ]

Nevertheless, customers’ (i.e., students’) perceived quality of higher educationalservice has still been considered as among the most important ones to highereducational institutions Since service quality is considered to be the differencebetween customers’ expectation and actual performance[CITATION Zei90 \l

1033 ],the quality of higher educational service can be defined as “the differencebetween what a student expects to receive and his/her perceptions of actualdelivery”[CITATION ONe04 \p 42 \l 1033 ]

The above definition implies a close connection between students’ satisfaction andeducational quality The better universities can fulfil students’ expectation, the betterthe quality and higher students’ satisfaction will be[CITATION Bro98 \m Guo99 \l

1033 ].In order to do so, the institutions should have thorough understandings onstudents’ expectation A large research stream has focused extensively on exploringthis topic, i.e what is included in students’ expectation at educational service andwhich factors can have an impact on their satisfaction Making students satisfied isespecially important to the growth of higher educational instutions due to severalreasons First, satisfied students can attract new students by giving them positivefeedbacks for the course that they have enrolled In addition, satisfied students maycome back in the future andregister for other courses organized by theinstitutions[CITATION Guo99 \m Wie02 \m Mav04 \m Mar5a \t \m Mar5b \n \t \mHel071 \m Sch04 \l 1033 ] In addition, Guolla [CITATION Guo99 \n \t \l 1033 ]pointed out that overall course satisfaction is positively related to raising funds for theuniversity and higher student motivation Considering this importance, in the nextsection, we focus on exploring the influences of professors on students’ satisfaction

2 The role of professors in determining students’ satisfaction

According to Harnash-Glezer &Meyer[CITATION Har91 \n \t \l 1033 ] andHill[CITATION Hil03 \n \t \l 1033 ], teaching staffs play a key role in influencingstudents’ satisfaction Findings from thesestudies indicate that the quality of theprofessor is one of the most important factors in determining higher educationalservice quality An “effective” professor can motivate students to engage in thelessons, inspire them to learn and develop their performance at theuniversities[CITATION Mar5c \t \m Poz00 \t \l 1033 ].Prior research has figured out

many characteristics of effective professors Some of the most notable characteristicsinclude communication skills, enthusiasm, empathy, rapport and caring to students’needs [ CITATION Gru10 \l 1033 ] It is interesting to learn from prior literature thatbeing knowledgeable and having expertise in the teaching field are only two in dozens

of different characteristics that students expect a professor to have Moreover,excellent teaching appears to be influenced more by the professors’ personality thanthe knowledge they provide in class [ CITATION Moo07 \l 1033 ]

In addition, it is important to study from the students’ point of view As Joseph et al.[CITATION Jos05 \n \t \l 1033 ]pointed out, traditional approaches to investigatestudents’ satisfaction mainly choose the criteria based on the standards ofadministrators or academics, understandings from the standpoint of students – theprimary target customers are crucial

III Kano method

1 What is Kano method

In the 1980s, professor Noriaki Kano invented a method, which was then named afterhim, to analyze the product development and customer satisfaction The purpose of themethod is to distinguish three types of requirements that affect customer preferences asfollows

(1) Must-be requirements are the requirements that have to be included in the features

of a product The customers will be very disappointed if these requirements are notfulfilled However, the fulfillment of these requirements will not increase customersatisfaction as these requirements are considered to be prerequisites of products orservices Must-be requirements are minimum level that producers, or service providersmust reach to satisfy their customers In other words, these requirements are must-metrequirements, the customers will have no interests on product if these requirements aremissing

In the context of our study, one example for a must-be requirement of efficient

professors can be knowledgeable Professors or lecturers should definitely and

obviously be knowledgeable regarding their fields If a person does not have thoroughknowledge on the lessons they teach, students will be very disappointed

(2) One-dimensional requirements:Regarding one-dimensional requirements, the

customer’s satisfaction degree is proportional to the fulfilment of these requirements,

or vice versa, that is, the customer’s dissatisfaction degree is proportional to theignorance of these requirements Put in other words, the higher fulfillment of theserequirements gains, the higher customer’s satisfaction will be

For example, Gruber, Reppel and Voss[CITATION Gru10 \n \t \l 1033 ] reported thatgood communication skills is a one-dimensional factor that students want theirprofessor to acquire It means that better the professor’s communication skills are, themore satisfied students will be

(3) Attractive requirements: This type of requirements has the strongest influence on

customer satisfaction Fulfilling these requirements produces a larger satisfactiondegree than fulfilling one-dimensional requirements does However, if theserequirements are not met, customer will not be dissatisfied

A typical example for this type of requirements is from the study ofGruber[CITATION Inv \n \t \l 1033 ]: the students who were surveyed showed theirexcitement on “variety of teaching method” factor and marked it as an attractiverequirement for their professor This result implies that the students would show a lot

of interests on the lectures that were delivered by different methods However, ifprofessors do not change their teaching method through lessons, the students are finewith it

2 Advantages of Kano method

Advantages of adopting Kano method are at least twofold First, product requirementsare categorized in certain groups that are must-be, one-dimensional and attractiverequirements This classifying will produce a recommendation for producers, orservice providers, about which requirements should be more focused on than theothers More precisely, producers or service providers should invest more efforts onone-dimensional and attractive requirements rather than must-be requirements, whichare already at a satisfactory level, since they have a larger effect on the customer’slevel of satisfaction

Second, Kano’s method will offer valuable help in the product development stage Inthe event that two product requirements cannot be fulfilled in same time due to

technical or financial reasons, the feature that has a greater influence on customersatisfaction should be carried out first.

3 Major steps to apply Kano method

In general, the application of Kano method to explore determinants of customersatisfaction includes three major steps as follows

(1) Step one: Identification of product requirements In this stage, researchers will need

to conduct interview or similar methods with customers to figure out what are theirrequirements on the product or services Researchers suggests that most customers arenot clear about their desires and buying motives, particularly when the products orservices are new if they are only asked about their expectation at the products.Therefore, Shiba, Graham and Walden [CITATION Shi93 \n \t \l 1033 ] offer a set offour questions that help to reveal the “hidden” desires and purchasing motives ofcustomers, which are:

1 Which associations does the customer make when using the product x?

2 Which problems/ defects/ complaints does the customer associate with theuse of the product x?

3 Which criteria does the customer take into consideration when buying theproduct x?

4 Which new features or services would better meet the expectations of thecustomer? What would the customer change in the product x?

(2) Step two: Construction of the Kano questionnaire

After identifying customers’ requirements towards the products/ services in step one,researchers now move to step two of designing the questionnaire for target customers

In this questionnaire, for each chosen requirement or variable, a pair of questions is

formulated with five different ways of answers The first question is called functional question, which concerns the customer’s reaction if the product has the requirement The second question is called dysfunctional question, which concerns the customer’s reaction if the product does not have the requirement.

One example of how the two questions are formulated can be taken from ourquestionnaire in Figure 1 below

Table 15:Functional and dysfunctional question in the Kano questionnaire.

If a lecturer has a lot of practical experiences which are

related to knowledge from the textbook and he/she can

share those experiences in the class, how do you feel?

(Functional form of question)

1 I like it that way

2 It must be that way

3 I am neutral

4 I can live that way

5 I dislike that way

If a lecturer does not have many practical experiences,

therefore, they mainly focus on teaching knowledge

from the textbook, how do you feel?

(Dysfunctional form of question)

1 I like it that way

2 It must be that way

3 I am neutral

4 I can live that way

5 I dislike that way

The two questions in Figure 1 are designed for the characteristic of “having manypractical experiences” of professors Students who do the survey will need to provideanswers for both of the questions These answers will then be coded based on theevaluation table provided by Kano (1984) as in Table 2

Table 16: Kano evaluation table

Customer requirement Dysfunctional (negative) question

dysfunctional question We then combine these two answers together in the evaluationtable and arrive at category A It means that practical expertise factor is an attractivestudent’s factor from their view point If the answer falls in category M or category O,

it means that the focused requirement or feature is considered as a must-be or dimension requirement, respectively, to the interviewee Category I indicates that theinterviewee is indifferent to this feature The existence of this issue is not necessaryand the does not care much about this feature The category Q is questionable answer

one-In general, we only get this code Q when the question does not make sense, theinterviewee misunderstands the question or they choose the answer randomly

(Step 3) Evaluation and interpretation

After having combined the answers from the functional and dysfunctional questions inthe evaluation table, the next step is to analyze and interpret the results Researcherscan conduct several extra analyses in this step depending on their goals For example,

in our study, we calculate customer satisfaction coefficient to figure out whether

satisfaction can be increased when a professor has criteria (or characteristics) listed inour questionnaire More details on this calculation will be explained in the section ondata analyses

IV Proposed characteristics of efficient professors

As stated above, the first step to apply Kano method to identify customers’requirements, or in our case, which characteristics that students expect an efficientprofessor should have In this section we propose a list of characteristics of efficientprofessors that we assume IS-VNU students will need from their professors This listwas made based on both reviewing prior literature on characteristics of efficientprofessors and our own expectation towards professors at IS-VNU

(1) Expertise (Practical experience):Feng Su and Margaret Wood[CITATION

Fen12 \n \t \l 1033 ] state that it is necessary for lecturers to have practical knowledge

in the subject area that they teach For students, the experiences regarding what arehappening in practiceprovided by the professor makes the lecture more realistic andattractive From discussion with our classmates, we notice that many of them thinkthat the knowledge they have learned in university is theoretical and cannot be used in