Investigating the Relationship Between Student Evaluations of Teaching and Achievement of Student Learning Outcomes in Higher Education: the Case of English Language & Data Culture at HSE University

This study aims to contribute to the discussion around the validity of the student evaluation of teaching (SETs) by using independent standardised test scores in digital skills and English language from Higher School of Economics, a selective Russian university, as an objective metric of learning to assess their correlation with SET scores for relevant courses. Existing literature presents ambiguous findings regarding the connection between SET scores and learning outcomes, predominantly suggesting a negligible or weak relationship. While these studies only rely on data with small sample size from a narrow range of courses in one subject and primarily use course-specific final grades as a measure of learning, the breadth of data and use of independent standardised test results across two subject areas in this study stands to offer a new perspective. Results of multiple regression analyses in different model specifications suggest a more nuanced interrelation between SET scores and learning achievements, depending on the subject and its characteristics: whereas independently measured digital skills are strongly positively correlated with the SET scores on the relevant courses and teachers, English language skills show weak, but negative correlation patterns. In general, this diversity can be attributed to specificity of skills and curriculum place of two investigated subjects. In other words, our findings help to understand the diverse patterns of SET data in different subject areas and state the desirability of various approaches to deal with them. More broadly, these insights offer implications for enhancing interpretation ways of SET instruments to better align teaching evaluations with actual learning, contributing to the ongoing discourse on the various implementation domains of SET in higher education. Keywords: student evaluations of teaching, standardised tests, teaching effectiveness, higher education, learning outcomes.