61-75

• Φράγκος, Χρήστος Κ.
• Frangos, Constantinos C.
• Πολυχρονόπουλος, Γιώργος
• Sotiropoulou, V.

The continuous evaluation of instructors’ effectiveness and courses’ relevance constitute an important part of the educational Process ]. In this paper, a multicriteria decision making method, called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which has been developed by Saaty is used for the Ranking of the following University Courses: “Introduction to Computing”,”Business Statistics” and “Financial Mathematics”. The data for using the AHP Model are Greek University students’ answers to a Questionnaire for the evaluation of the above three courses, with respect to the following three criteria: “Teaching Effect of Professor”, “Effect of a good course book” and “ easiness for obtaining a pass grade at exams”. The subcriteria for the criterion “Effect of a good course book” are: “Clear exposition of content”, “Inclusion of many examples” and “ easy access of Course book”. The subcriteria for the “teaching effect of Professor” are: “Academic qualifications”, “previous professional Experience”, “Communication ability”, “Friendly conduct” and “Research activity”. The subcriteria for “Easiness for obtaining a pass grade at exams” are: “Avoidance of stress by good preparation”, “obtaining a partial pass grade by Continuous Assessments during the course” and “existence of knowledge about the subject from previous courses”.The random sample of the evaluators were 482 students at the University of Athens, Greeceand at the Technological Institute of Athens. A questionnaire was distributed to them containing questions on Demographics, Pairwise Comparison of the three Courses with respect to the three Criteria and Pairwise Comparisons of the subcategories of every Criterion. After applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process, we found the weights corresponding to the “importance” of the courses. The final ranking was the following in descending order: First course: “Introduction to Computing”, Second course: “Business Statistics” and Third course: “Financial Mathematics”. The Consistency Rations were calculated for all 7 pairwise comparison matrices(PCM) and were all less than (0,1), which is an important requirement for the consistency of the pairwise comparisons according to Saaty. An important finding is that, for students, the “Communication ability” and “friendly conduct” of a Professor carries more weight that his “research activity” and that the “homework given to students during the course” carries more weight than “knowledge accumulated from similar previous courses”. Finally, students rate higher a “book containing many examples” presented with clarity than the “effort which they make in obtaining the course book.”.

• Economics and Business

• Economics

Analytic Hierarchy Process, Consistency Ratios. Operational Research, Student Preferences, Teaching Effectiveness

JEL Classification:C6, C8, I20, I21, M1.

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