Taiwanese and Norwegian Engineering students' self-image of academic abilities, grades and course satisfaction

This study addresses the reliability of engineering students' evaluations of courses. The hypothesis is that students' evaluations of courses are affected by their grades. Students that obtain good grades are more likely to rate a course favorably than students who get lower grades. Moreover, the results indicated that self image of academic abilities differ across cultures as the Norwegian students studied had an inflated image of their abilities compared to that of Taiwanese students. One implication of this study is that results from certain student evaluation questionnaires should be interpreted with caution. Ranking of teachers based on such results should be avoided.