Students' evaluation of tutors in distance education: a quasi-longitudinal study.

The methods used for evaluating teacher performance aim at providing the university with an in-depth understanding of its academic staff. Improving teacher performance and enhancing their training so as to enable them to improve their teaching methods, is a common goal of academic institutions. In the case of the Hellenic Open University, the methodology used is mainly based on the evaluation of tutors by their students. The students are asked once a year to fill in an anonymous questionnaire and return it to the tutors' supervisor. Then all data is processed. The presented study used tutors' evaluation from five consecutive academic years. Analysis of the results showed that the tutors' evaluations remained relatively stable across the years. However, ratings were significantly higher for female tutors than for the male tutors. Students' participation in the evaluation, students' grades and students attendance in the face to face meetings were positively correlated with the students' ratings.