Study on characteristics of efficient professors from the perspectives of is vnu students

Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

Study on Characteristics of Efficient Professors –
From the Perspectives of IS-VNU Students

Group sciences: Bế Ngọc Phương Mai
Hồ Thanh Phương
Phạm Ngọc Lê Huy
Hà Anh
Class: IB2015C, IB2015G
Science advisor: Dr. Đoàn Thu Trang

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

I.

Introduction

The significant increase in both number and sizes of higher educational institutions in
Vietnam in recent years has clearly made the higher education industry more
competitive. This forces universities and colleges to pay more attention on meeting the
requirements and satisfaction of students – their major customers. Students’
satisfaction is important to higher educational institutions as it not only reflects the
educational services but is also closely related to the growth of the institutions.
Satisfied students may attract new students by getting involved in positive word-ofmouth communication with their friends and family members. In addition, satisfied
students may also come back and enroll in other courses provided by the institutions
[CITATION Guo99 \m Sch04 \l 1033 ]. The necessity of understanding students’
satisfaction and its determinants is even more substantial to Vietnam high educational

institutions as in a recent study on 105 students of a Vietnam university,
Pham[CITATION Lie17 \n \t \l 1033 ] found that only about 26% of students in the
sample feel satisfied while 35% of them feel dissatisfied with their enrollment at the
university. Moreover, 40% of students in the sample refused to recommend the
university to their family members and friends. Surprisingly, while some Vietnam
universities conduct annual surveys to collect feedback from students on their
educational services, not many academic studies focus intensively on factors
influencing students’ satisfaction (Pham, 2017).
Among the factors that have significant impact on student’ satisfaction, the quality of
teaching staffs, particularly lecturers or professors39, has been explored in many studies
as one of the most important determinants[CITATION Hil03 \m Poz00 \l 1033 ].In the
higher education industry, if universities are regarded as service providers and
knowledge and skills are standard services that they offer, professors can
beperceivedas the middle men who deliver lectures, involving knowledge and skills, to
the customers that are students. Therefore, the quality, behaviors and attitudes of
professors and their lectures should play a key role in determining the level of
students’ satisfaction. As suggested by Gruber, Reppel & Voss [CITATION Gru10 \n \t
\l 1033 ], the more effective the professor is, the more satisfied students will be.
39 In this study, the terms “professors” and “lecturers” are used interchangeably and are both referred to
lecturers.

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

However, the perception of an “effective professor” may vary among professors and
students. What professors consider to be “effective” and good for students may not
really be effective from the students’ opinions. Therefore, insights on what students
expect an “effective professor” will offer many practical implications to higher

educational institutions. These understanding and knowledge may not only help
lecturers to improve their own teaching quality but also assist the university in
building a set of criteria for teaching staffs and facilitate the recruitment procedure.
Taking into account all of the above arguments, we devote this research to explore the
question: “What are the characteristics of effective professors, from the perspective of
students?”. To answer this question, we apply Kano model, a methodology developed
by professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s. This method allows us to investigate which
components of products and services influence customer satisfaction, and more
importantly, their different influential roles in determining customer satisfaction (Kano
et al. 1984, Sauerwein, et al. 1996). Prior literature suggests that customer satisfaction
was mainly considered as one-dimensional construction, i.e., the higher the perceived
product quality, the higher the customer’s satisfaction. However, in many cases,
fulfilling an individual product or service requirement maynot lead to equal increase in
customer satisfaction. Kano solved this problem by introducing a new method, which
categorized determinants of customer satisfaction into three different categories.
First,must-be requirements are considered to be prerequisites by the customers.
Fulfilling these requirements are necessary and obvious, hence, will not increase
customer satisfaction. However, if these requirements are not fulfilled, the customers
will be extremely dissatisfied. Second, one-dimensional requirements are explicitly
demanded by the customers. Higher level of fulfillment of these requirements will
result in higher customer satisfactionand vice versa. Third, attractive requirements are
not explicitly demanded by the customers but will have the greatest impact on
customer satisfaction. As customers do not ask for them, if these requirements are
missing, customers will not be dissatisfied. However, fulfilling these requirements will
lead to significant satisfaction from customer.
We suggest that applying Kano method in our study will provide an extensive answer
to our research question. As Kano method distinguishes characteristics of effective
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

professors into three different categories, we will know which characteristics are the
prerequisites that professors should have as a must (i.e.,must-be requirements). In
addition, characteristics that fall into the category of attractive requirements should
gain particular attention from both professors and universities as they can significantly
increase students’ satisfaction. Moreover, since SERVQUAL has been the popular
model applied in studies in Vietnam on determinants of customers’ satisfaction, we
hope that our research will encourage more studies to investigate indicators of the
teaching quality in high educational systemswith different methods to make the
research stream more diverse and prosperous.
We conduct this research in the context of International School – Vietnam National
University (IS-VNU). A questionnaire, designed following Kano method style, was
sent out to 143 IS-VNU students in different study programs and school years.
Findings from the analysis indicate that: First, three factors that are most influential to
students’ satisfaction are “expertise”, “sense of humor”, and “good presentation skills”.
Second, although “reliability” does not have a significant impact on students’
satisfaction, the lack of this characteristic can cause severe disappointment to students.
Last, “approachability” and “empathy” are the two requirements that have relatively
high coefficients in both satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We hope that this paper will
deliver to the readers better understandings on students’ requirements on their “ideal
lecturer”. In addition, using findings from this study, IS-VNU can make meaningful
adaptation to the current teaching programs, curriculum, teaching methods and so on
to better satisfy students’ expectation.
The remaining of the paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 provides theoretical
background on higher education as a service and satisfaction in higher education. In
this section, we also describe the important role of professors in determining higher
educational quality as well as findings on the characteristics of an effective professor
from prior research. Kano method is explained in details in section 3, followed by the
set of proposed characteristics of effective professors in section 4. Section 5 and 6

presents data collection, data analyses and empirical results. Section 6 discusses and
concludes.
II.

Literature review
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

1. Educational servicequality and Satisfaction in higher education
Higher education has long been considered as a complex service in many prior studies
(e.g., Curran & Rosen[CITATION Curran \n

\t

\l 1033 ];Davis &

Swanson[CITATION Davis \n \t \l 1033 ];Eagle & Brennan[CITATION Eag \n \t \l
1033 ]; Hennig-Thurau[CITATION Hen01 \n \t \l 1033 ]). As educational services are
mainly intangible, the professor’s teaching efforts are “produced” by professor and
“consumed” by students[CITATION Sha951 \l 1033 ]. On the one hand, educational
service has several characteristics that are similar to a normal service. For instance,
each student has his/her demands or requirements for contents of lectures or attributes
of his/her professor, whichis the same asrequirements from the customers for the
service provider. However, on the other hand, there are some differences between
educational service and other services. First,students are rather “partners” than
“customers” in this kind of service. Unlike several other services such as eating in
restaurant, traveling by bus or sleeping in a hotel, in educational service, students as
customers must take a huge responsibility for their own education and cannot just

consume what they receive from professor, university or any higher educational
institutions as the service provider[CITATION Sve07 \l 1033 ].Moreover, students are
also considered as “co-creators of the value” as the success of the educational service’s
“products” depends on both professors and students, as service provider and
customers[CITATION Coo07 \m Var04 \t \m Var06 \n \t \l 1033 ]. Under the
guidance of one professor, the students with different levels of knowledge-acquiring
ability will have very different learning outcomes. In short, no matter which rolethe
students play in the educational service, i.e., as “partners” or “co-creators of value”,
they have significant contribution in creating a valuable learning experience in general
and good teaching quality in particular.
As educational service has been becoming increasingly competitive in recent
decades, the quality of higher education was serious taken into account by higher
educational institutions. Prior research suggests that quality in higher education is very
hard to be defined and measured because each and every stakeholder in educational
service, namely students, professors, universities, government and so on, regards
quality different depending on their interests[CITATION Har93 \l 1033 ].
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Nevertheless, customers’ (i.e., students’) perceived quality of higher educational
service has still been considered as among the most important ones to higher
educational institutions. Since service quality is considered to be the difference
between customers’ expectation and actual performance[CITATION Zei90 \l
1033 ],the quality of higher educational service can be defined as “the difference
between what a student expects to receive and his/her perceptions of actual
delivery”[CITATION ONe04 \p 42 \l 1033 ].
The above definition implies a close connection between students’ satisfaction and
educational quality. The better universities can fulfil students’ expectation, the better

the quality and higher students’ satisfaction will be[CITATION Bro98 \m Guo99 \l
1033 ].In order to do so, the institutions should have thorough understandings on
students’ expectation. A large research stream has focused extensively on exploring
this topic, i.e. what is included in students’ expectation at educational service and
which factors can have an impact on their satisfaction. Making students satisfied is
especially important to the growth of higher educational instutions due to several
reasons. First, satisfied students can attract new students by giving them positive
feedbacks for the course that they have enrolled. In addition, satisfied students may
come back in the future andregister for other courses organized by the
institutions[CITATION Guo99 \m Wie02 \m Mav04 \m Mar5a \t \m Mar5b \n \t \m
Hel071 \m Sch04 \l 1033 ]. In addition, Guolla [CITATION Guo99 \n \t \l 1033 ]
pointed out that overall course satisfaction is positively related to raising funds for the
university and higher student motivation. Considering this importance, in the next
section, we focus on exploring the influences of professors on students’ satisfaction.
2. The role of professors in determining students’ satisfaction
According to Harnash-Glezer &Meyer[CITATION Har91 \n

\t

\l 1033 ] and

Hill[CITATION Hil03 \n \t \l 1033 ], teaching staffs play a key role in influencing
students’ satisfaction. Findings from thesestudies indicate that the quality of the
professor is one of the most important factors in determining higher educational
service quality. An “effective” professor can motivate students to engage in the
lessons,

inspire

them

to

learn

and

develop

their

performance

at

the

universities[CITATION Mar5c \t \m Poz00 \t \l 1033 ].Prior research has figured out
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

many characteristics of effective professors. Some of the most notable characteristics
include communication skills, enthusiasm, empathy, rapport and caring to students’
needs [ CITATION Gru10 \l 1033 ]. It is interesting to learn from prior literature that
being knowledgeable and having expertise in the teaching field are only two in dozens
of different characteristics that students expect a professor to have. Moreover,
excellent teaching appears to be influenced more by the professors’ personality than
the knowledge they provide in class [ CITATION Moo07 \l 1033 ].

In addition, it is important to study from the students’ point of view. As Joseph et al.
[CITATION Jos05 \n \t \l 1033 ]pointed out, traditional approaches to investigate
students’ satisfaction mainly choose the criteria based on the standards of
administrators or academics, understandings from the standpoint of students – the
primary target customers are crucial.
III.

Kano method
1. What is Kano method

In the 1980s, professor Noriaki Kano invented a method, which was then named after
him, to analyze the product development and customer satisfaction. The purpose of the
method is to distinguish three types of requirements that affect customer preferences as
follows.
(1) Must-be requirements are the requirements that have to be included in the features
of a product. The customers will be very disappointed if these requirements are not
fulfilled. However, the fulfillment of these requirements will not increase customer
satisfaction as these requirements are considered to be prerequisites of products or
services. Must-be requirements are minimum level that producers, or service providers
must reach to satisfy their customers. In other words, these requirements are must-met
requirements, the customers will have no interests on product if these requirements are
missing.
In the context of our study, one example for a must-be requirement of efficient
professors can be knowledgeable. Professors or lecturers should definitely and
obviously be knowledgeable regarding their fields. If a person does not have thorough
knowledge on the lessons they teach, students will be very disappointed.
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

(2) One-dimensional requirements:Regarding one-dimensional requirements, the
customer’s satisfaction degree is proportional to the fulfilment of these requirements,
or vice versa, that is, the customer’s dissatisfaction degree is proportional to the
ignorance of these requirements. Put in other words, the higher fulfillment of these
requirements gains, the higher customer’s satisfaction will be.
For example, Gruber, Reppel and Voss[CITATION Gru10 \n \t \l 1033 ] reported that
good communication skills is a one-dimensional factor that students want their
professor to acquire. It means that better the professor’s communication skills are, the
more satisfied students will be.
(3) Attractive requirements: This type of requirements has the strongest influence on
customer satisfaction. Fulfilling these requirements produces a larger satisfaction
degree than fulfilling one-dimensional requirements does. However, if these
requirements are not met, customer will not be dissatisfied.
A typical example for this type of requirements is from the study of
Gruber[CITATION Inv \n \t \l 1033 ]: the students who were surveyed showed their
excitement on “variety of teaching method” factor and marked it as an attractive
requirement for their professor. This result implies that the students would show a lot
of interests on the lectures that were delivered by different methods. However, if
professors do not change their teaching method through lessons, the students are fine
with it.
2. Advantages of Kano method
Advantages of adopting Kano method are at least twofold. First, product requirements
are categorized in certain groups that are must-be, one-dimensional and attractive
requirements. This classifying will produce a recommendation for producers, or
service providers, about which requirements should be more focused on than the
others. More precisely, producers or service providers should invest more efforts on
one-dimensional and attractive requirements rather than must-be requirements, which
are already at a satisfactory level, since they have a larger effect on the customer’s
level of satisfaction.

Second, Kano’s method will offer valuable help in the product development stage. In
the event that two product requirements cannot be fulfilled in same time due to
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

technical or financial reasons, the feature that has a greater influence on customer
satisfaction should be carried out first.
3. Major steps to apply Kano method
In general, the application of Kano method to explore determinants of customer
satisfaction includes three major steps as follows.
(1) Step one: Identification of product requirements. In this stage, researchers will need
to conduct interview or similar methods with customers to figure out what are their
requirements on the product or services. Researchers suggests that most customers are
not clear about their desires and buying motives, particularly when the products or
services are new if they are only asked about their expectation at the products.
Therefore, Shiba, Graham and Walden [CITATION Shi93 \n \t \l 1033 ] offer a set of
four questions that help to reveal the “hidden” desires and purchasing motives of
customers, which are:
1. Which associations does the customer make when using the product x?
2. Which problems/ defects/ complaints does the customer associate with the
use of the product x?
3. Which criteria does the customer take into consideration when buying the
product x?
4. Which new features or services would better meet the expectations of the
customer? What would the customer change in the product x?
(2) Step two: Construction of the Kano questionnaire
After identifying customers’ requirements towards the products/ services in step one,
researchers now move to step two of designing the questionnaire for target customers.

In this questionnaire, for each chosen requirement or variable, a pair of questions is
formulated with five different ways of answers. The first question is called functional
question, which concerns the customer’s reaction if the product has the requirement.
The second question is called dysfunctional question, which concerns the customer’s
reaction if the product does not have the requirement.
One example of how the two questions are formulated can be taken from our
questionnaire in Figure 1 below.

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

Table 15:Functional and dysfunctional question in the Kano questionnaire.
If a lecturer has a lot of practical experiences which are
related to knowledge from the textbook and he/she can
share those experiences in the class, how do you feel?

1. I like it that way
2. It must be that way
3. I am neutral

(Functional form of question)

4. I can live that way
5. I dislike that way

If a lecturer does not have many practical experiences,
therefore, they mainly focus on teaching knowledge
from the textbook, how do you feel?

1. I like it that way
2. It must be that way
3. I am neutral

(Dysfunctional form of question)

4. I can live that way
5. I dislike that way

The two questions in Figure 1 are designed for the characteristic of “having many
practical experiences” of professors. Students who do the survey will need to provide
answers for both of the questions. These answers will then be coded based on the
evaluation table provided by Kano (1984) as in Table 2.
Table 16: Kano evaluation table
Customer requirement

Dysfunctional (negative) question
Like

Must be

Neutral

Live with

Dislike

Like

Q

A

A

A

O

Functional

Must-be

R

I

I

I

M

(positive)

Neutral

R

I

I

I

M

Live with

R

I

I

I

M

Dislike

R

R

R

R

Q

question

In Table 2, customer requirement is….
A: Attractive

O: One-dimensional

M: Must-be

Q: Questionable

R: Reverse
I: Indifferent
In our example, suppose a student gave the answer “(1) I like it that way” for the
functional question and answer “(3) I am neutral” or “(4) I can live with that way” for
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

dysfunctional question. We then combine these two answers together in the evaluation
table and arrive at category A. It means that practical expertise factor is an attractive
student’s factor from their view point. If the answer falls in category M or category O,
it means that the focused requirement or feature is considered as a must-be or onedimension requirement, respectively, to the interviewee. Category I indicates that the
interviewee is indifferent to this feature. The existence of this issue is not necessary
and the does not care much about this feature. The category Q is questionable answer.
In general, we only get this code Q when the question does not make sense, the
interviewee misunderstands the question or they choose the answer randomly.

(Step 3) Evaluation and interpretation.
After having combined the answers from the functional and dysfunctional questions in
the evaluation table, the next step is to analyze and interpret the results. Researchers
can conduct several extra analyses in this step depending on their goals. For example,
in our study, we calculate customer satisfaction coefficient to figure out whether
satisfaction can be increased when a professor has criteria (or characteristics) listed in
our questionnaire. More details on this calculation will be explained in the section on
data analyses.
IV.

Proposed characteristics of efficient professors

As stated above, the first step to apply Kano method to identify customers’
requirements, or in our case, which characteristics that students expect an efficient
professor should have. In this section we propose a list of characteristics of efficient
professors that we assume IS-VNU students will need from their professors. This list
was made based on both reviewing prior literature on characteristics of efficient
professors and our own expectation towards professors at IS-VNU.
(1) Expertise (Practical experience):Feng Su and Margaret Wood[CITATION
Fen12 \n \t \l 1033 ] state that it is necessary for lecturers to have practical knowledge
in the subject area that they teach. For students, the experiences regarding what are
happening in practiceprovided by the professor makes the lecture more realistic and
attractive. From discussion with our classmates, we notice that many of them think
that the knowledge they have learned in university is theoretical and cannot be used in

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

the future. Therefore, sharing practical experience may change student's thought, help
them to visualize how they will apply knowledge from lecture in their future work.
(2) Approachability: The approachability of the professor can be demonstrated by
whether the professor is willing to answer students' questions[CITATION Bro04 \l
1033 ]. Lecturers sometimes do not know the problems that students encounter as well
as the receptive ability of all the students in the class, so if the lecturer is approachable,
the students will have the opportunity to ask freely and openly about their difficulties
and understand more about the lectures. Thus, the approachability of the lecture can
inspire student to study.
(3) Empathy (responsiveness):Responsiveness is considered as the readiness to assist
customers and provide appropriate service[CITATION Zei \l 1033 ]. In education
perspective, this term implies the ability to handle students’ demand and their feedback
efficiently. It helps lecturers find out needs and wants of the students, suitable class
hours or individual attention. Responsiveness is also used to judge the attitude and
punctuality of faculties in order to support student to obey the regulation of institution.
(4) Sense of humor: According to Lantos’s findings[CITATION Lan97 \n \t \l 1033 ],
humorous teacher is a determinant of students’ satisfaction. Humor is defined as a
characteristic of having ability to tell amusing stories or making fun of discussed
issues. Students in the class of a funny lecturer are more likely to get the point of the
lesson than their counterparts under the guidance of a lecturer that do not have such an
attribute. This perspective is estimated whether students are excited if their professor is
humorous and the content of lesson includes funny factor or not.
(5) Reliability: Reliability is proficiency to serve the promised service dependably and
accurately. In our case, this characteristic implies that the lecture provides a clear
syllabus with fair grading system from the beginning of the course and is always fair
and consistent in their behaviors and evaluation though the course.Pariseau and
McDaniel[CITATION Par \n \t \l 1033 ] show that reliability has been one of the most
affective impact that students pay attention most.Gruber, Reppel and Voss[CITATION
Gru10 \n \t \l 1033 ] also suggest that reliability is the fundamental factor of students’
satisfaction.

(6) Variety of teaching methods: In order for students to understand deeply the lecture,
the lecturer’s role is not only to answer their question but also to explain in the easiest
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to understand and most attractive way[CITATION Bro04 \l 1033 ]. Even though
lecturers have professional qualifications, if professors cannot interpret in different
ways and just repeat several times in a lesson, the students will get bored. Moreover,
various explanations make lectures more interesting, attract students’ attention and
help them understand the lesson better.
(7) Good presentation skill: According to James[CITATION Jam15 \n \t \l 1033 ], in
classroom environment, effective presentation skills are important for improving
communication and creating positive learning experiences, which helps students to
understand clearly and memorably. It also helps teacher communicate complex
information in simple and interesting ways to keep students engaged. Having good
presentation skills also gives lecturers the ability to summarize what they want to
impart as succinctly as possible, thus saving working time.
V.

Data collection and Data analyses

1. Data collection
With the set of seven characteristics of efficient professors, as proposed in the previous
section, we started to design our questionnaire survey following the style of Kano
method. As we choose to test seven characteristics, the questionnaire survey has
fourteen questions in total. Details of the questionnaire are presented in the Appendix.
An example of a couple of questions is in Table 3 below.
Table 17: Examples of functional and dysfunctional question inour questionnaire.

If a lecturer has a lot of practical experiences which are
related to knowledge from the textbook and he/she can share
those experiences in the class, how do you feel?
(Functional form of question)

1. I like it that way
2. It must be that way
3. I am neutral
4. I can live that way
5. I dislike that way

If a lecturer does not have many practical experiences,
therefore, they mainly focus on teaching knowledge from the
textbook, how do you feel?
(Dysfunctional form of question)

1. I like it that way
2. It must be that way
3. I am neutral
4. I can live that way
5. I dislike that way

We then delivered the printed questionnaire to students fromfive different classes in
IS-VNU from both IB2015 and AC2016 programs. Wereceived 143 survey forms back
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totally. The advantage of applying survey is time saving, low cost and high efficiency.

However, it also brings some drawbacks that respondents may understand the question
wrongly. Nevertheless, this is not our concern because there is Vietnamese translation
below each and every question in our survey.
2. Data analysis
After receiving the surveys, we combine answers using the Kano evaluation table as in
Table 4 below.
Table 18:Kano evaluation table:
Dysfunctional (negative) question

Customer
requirement

Like

Must be

Neutral

Live with

Dislike

Q

A

A

A

O

R

I

I

I

M

R

I

I

I

M

Live with

R

I

I

I

M

Dislike

R

R

R

R

Q

Like
Functiona Must-be
l
Neutral
(positive)
question

Customer requirement is:
A: Attractive O: One- dimensional
B: Must-be

Q: Questionable

R: Reverse

I: Indifferent

In this search, all data are coded, stored and analysed using Excel. The frequency of
each answer was calculated and reported in Table 5 in the result section. In addition,
we also calculate the customer satisfaction coefficient. This coefficient reveals whether
satisfaction can be increased by fulfilling a requirement, in our case, when the
professors have a chosen characteristic. To get these coefficients, we need to apply the
two following formulas, created by Kano (1984):
Extent of satisfaction:
A+O
A+ O+ M + I

Extent of dissatisfaction:
O+ M
( A+ O+ M + I ) ×(−1)

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

In the satisfaction formula, we add the attractive and one-dimensional columns and
divide them by the total number of attractive, one-dimensional, must-be and indifferent
factors. The extent of dissatisfaction is calculated by adding the one-dimensional with
must-be columns and divide by them four factors totally times minus one (-1). The
character minus one emphasizes the negative influence on students’ satisfaction if this
characteristic is not fulfilled.
The positive CS-coefficient (satisfaction) ranges from 0 to 1: if the value of the
characteristic is closer to 1, it has higher impact on customers/ students’ satisfaction

and the further the value is to 0, the less influence on them. In contrast, the negative
CS-coefficient ranges from 0 to -1. The student’ dissatisfaction increases if the value
approaches to -1, implying analyzed characteristic is not fulfilled. The feature does not
cause the dissatisfaction if it is not met when the value gets closer to 0.
VI.

Results and Discussion

A summary of our findings is presented in Table 5. The satisfaction and disatisfaction
coefficients are plotted in Figure 1.
Table 19: Result table

Experti Approachab
se
ility

Empat
hy

Sense
of
Humor

Reliabili
ty

Variet
y of
teachi
ng

metho
d

Good
present
ati-on
skill

A

62

48

50

78

13

64

43

O

64

69

63

42

68

28

75

M

12

28

19

7

58

10

19

I

23

18

31

32

21

57

20

R

1

0

0

2

1

2

1

Q

1

0

0

2

2

2

5

Dissatisfact
ion
-47.2%
coefficient

-59.5%

-50.3% -30.8%

-78.8%

23.9%

-59.9%

Satisfactio

71.8%

69.3%

50.6%

57.9%

75.2%

78.3%

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

n
coefficient

Figure 71:Effect of Professor’s attributes on level of Satisfaction and
Dissatisfaction of Students

Results from Table 5 reveal which attribute professorsshould have to satisfyIS-VNU
student’s needs and which attribute can attract students' interest and excitement. From
Table 5, it can be seen that in chosen seven investigated characteristics, there are five
one dimensional factors and two attractive factors.

First, “expertise”, “approachability”, “empathy”, “reliability” and “good presentation
skill” are one-dimensional requirements. This means if the professors have these
characteristics, the students will be more satisfied and vice versa. The most influencing
factors for student satisfaction are “expertise” with satisfaction rate of 78.3%. This
finding highlights the importance of professor’s knowledge and particularly the strong
impact of professors’ practical experience on students’ satisfaction. In addition, the
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

transmission of knowledge from lecturers to students is also very important. Good
presentation skills of professors help to improve communication and create positive
learning experiences that allow students to understand the lesson clearly[CITATION
Jam15 \t \l 1033 ]. Moreover, lecturers should be approachable, friendly, listen to
students’ needs regarding the lesson or other university problem and help students
solve them.Those attributes give students the opportunity to receive the lecture in the
most efficient and effective way.
Although “reliability” does not increase students’ satisfaction a lot compared to other
variable (satisfaction coefficient = 50.6%), failing to fulfil this requirement will result
in highly dissatisfaction from students. The dissatisfaction coefficient of this
requirement is 78.8%, the highest in all coefficients. It can be seen that “reliability and
fairness” are fundamental attributes to create student satisfaction, which is similar to
previous research result by Gruber, Reppel and Voss[CITATION Gru10 \n \t \l 1033 ].
Most students always expect the teacher to have clear syllabus, explain clearly grading
system from the beginning of the course, and give marks fairly and reasonably
throughout the course.
The two remaining attributes, “sense of humor” and “variety of teaching methods” are
in the category of “attractive”. This means students do not explicitly ask for these two
factors. However, if the professors can provide them, students will be extremely

excited.Humor is not a necessary attribute for a lecturer, but it has a great influence on
student satisfaction. If a professor is funny, their lectures will be interesting and help
students concentrate more. Moreover, they can even make boring lecture content
interesting by applying it to a funny situation[ CITATION Gru10 \l 1033 ].This finding
is consistent with Lantos[CITATION Lan97 \n \t \l 1033 ], whosuggests that lecturers
should use humor as a tool to motivate students. Similarly, 64 out of 143 students
(roughly 45% of the sample) are interested in experiencing a different way of studying
such as learning from case studies, simulation games / role plays and so on.
In conclusion, combing results from Table 5 and Figure 1, we can see that the three
factors that are most influential to students’ satisfaction are “expertise”, “sense of
humour”, and “good presentation skills”. On the other hand, although “reliability”
does not have a significant impact on students’ satisfaction, the lack of this
characteristic can cause severe disappointment to students. Lastly, “approachability”
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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

and “empathy” are the two requirements that have relatively high coefficients in both
satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

VII.

Conclusion and Recommendation

This research aims at exploring what determines an “efficient professors” from
students’ perspectives, or in other words, what characteristics professors or lecturers
should have to satisfy students. We proposed seven different characteristics of an
efficient professor and tested how each of these characteristics may influence students’
satisfaction with Kano method (Kano, 1984). The empirical analysis was conducted

with a sample of 143 students from IS-VNU. Findings from this analysis suggests that
professors who are knowledgeable and have a lot of practical experiences are highly
valued by students. Also, students prefer professors with good sense of humor and
good communication skills, so that the lectures can be more interesting and attractive.
Although the remaining characteristics, i.e., approachability, empathy, variety of
teaching methods play an important role in increasing students’ satisfaction,
“reliability” is the most notable as failing to have this factor will lead to high
disappointment from students.
Practical implications: Using findings from this study, IS-VNU lectures can make
meaningful adaptation to the current teaching programs, curriculum, teaching methods
and so on to better satisfy students’ expectation.According to the recommendation
from Kano method that are listed above, IS-VNU’s board of directors should focus
more on the professor’s attributes that have larger influence on students’ satisfaction in
the case that two or more features cannot be accomplished in the same time. In that
case, they should aim at the professors who are expert in the field they work in
because expertise has the strongest impact on the students’ level of satisfaction. In
addition, the professors who deliver the lectures to students should be reliable and fair
due to the largest influence of this attribute on students’ dissatisfaction.
Theoretical contributions: The research on students’ perspective by Kano method
provides a more complete understanding of the wayhow to define an “effective
professor”. The document including satisfaction factors will facilitate easier summary

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Proceedings the 10th students scientific research conference

of standard efficient professors and lead to a more complete knowledge of improving
teaching quality.
Limitation: First, the research only explores characteristics of efficient professors from

the perspective of students while could not collect data from the professors’ side.
Future research can take this into account and complete the research by surveying both
students and teachers. In doing so, we will be able to see if there are any differences in
the way how professors and students consider a professor to be “efficient”. Second, the
sample of the data is still rather small. More data from all students from IS-VNU can
provide a broader picture on students’ expectation on their professors. Third, with the
same method, i.e. Kano method, future research may explore other factors that
influence students’ satisfaction, not only related to teaching staffs but also the content
of the lectures, programs, and so on.

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