Teaching and Evaluation Patterns of a Business BA Program

Teaching Mix and Student Performance

Evaluation of BA programs is periodically conducted in the Portuguese public education system, involving inspection of indicators of teaching patterns and student achievement. In its course, primary information is gathered which provides a natural database for a more complex multivariate study of the teaching process. It was the purpose of this research to depart from information collected for the 2000/2001 Self-Evaluation report of the Business BA program of the Faculdade de Ciências Económicas e Empresariais of Universidade Católica Portuguesa and search for identifying patterns of the teaching-mix, and along with it, of student achievement.

On the one hand, principal component decomposition provided a general view of the programme main features; discriminant analysis confirmed both scientific area and credit score category as providing significant affiliation identity to the programme courses.

On the other, student performance was found significantly related to daily scheduling, teachers profiles and evaluation practices – even if some of the encountered effects may be thought endogenous, but impossible to be controlled for due to the lack of information on student effort.