Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Taiwan: Examining Perceived Gaps between Faculty and Students

This study applied the Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (PZB) model to examine the perceived gap of teaching quality between faculty and students in Taiwan. The research data for this study were derived from the 2007-2008 evaluation report of the Ministry of Education (MOE) Teaching Excellence Project. This study transformed the data from faculty and student questionnaires in 28 participating universities. This article presents the gaps between the "importance of teaching quality" and "actual improvement of teaching" in percentiles. Both the t test and the Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) were used to examine differences in teaching quality. The results show differences for the manner in which faculty and students assess the importance of teaching quality, and actual teaching improvement. Faculty are typically more optimistic with their teaching quality and are more likely to provide a better assessment of their teaching quality than their students are. This study also identified factors that affect gaps in teaching quality, as follows (in order of importance): status (faculty or students), university sector, university scale, and university funding. In conclusion, this study proposes suggestions to improve teaching practices on different campuses.