It is difficult to identify specific ways to improve student ratings, but a few key elements tend to be associated with higher ratings:

• Academic Challenge

Courses which are challenging tend to be rated highly by students, provided that the course also supports students in meeting the challenge. However, courses which place high demands on students, but which seem to offer little assistance in meeting those demands, tend to receive lower ratings. In this case, the message to students seems to be "sink or swim."

• Clear Connections

Students who see a relationship between course work, assignments, and evaluation tend to give a course relatively higher ratings. Similarly, in courses with discussion sections or labs, student ratings tend to be higher if the integration of these different course components is clear to students.

• Perceived Value

There isn't a strong correlation between amount of work required for a course and the overall rating it receives. However, the overall rating is correlated with the ratio between "average hours per week" and "average hours per week that were valuable in advancing your education."

Even when an instructor has carefully developed a course with considerations such as these in mind, it's possible that students may not always recognize the support for learning that is available in the course, the connections among course components, or the value of the work they are doing. In cases like these, the instructor may not need to make significant changes in the course overall, but may need to help students see how to best make use of the opportunities and resources that the course already provides