Communication and Students' Needs
Measuring Students' Affect toward Teaching and Learning Process in Higher
Education
Ridwan Effendi and Vidi Sukmayadi
Communications Department, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Street. Dr Setiabudi No.229, Bandung Indonesia
Keywords: Affective Learning, Instructional Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Teacher Evaluation.
Abstract: In achieving successful learning outcomes, educational systems should be able to fulfill not only students'
academic needs but also their personal and interpersonal needs. To meet the students' needs, an effective and
affective communication must be employed in the teaching and learning process. In the current study, the
authors measure students' affect in regard to their affective learning experience and their evaluation toward
their teachers while studying in the university. Surveys were used to collect the students' affect from 886
students in eight faculties at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. The following results were yielded from the
data: (1) six out of eight faculties indicate a high affective learning level; (2) In terms of teachers/instructors
evaluation, most students from all faculties have a high level of appreciation to their teachers' instructional
communication; (3) In addition, the faculty of Art and Design Education received the highest rate on their
students' affect. The study is expected to contribute in providing initial data for developing an affective based
learning program.
1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the term “affective” have been introduced
and applied as a part of students’ learning process. As
described by Bloom (1964), The affective domain
describes the emotional processes of learning,
focusing on the learners’ emotional states, values,
motivations, attitudes and characters. In line with this,
Smith and Ragan (in Jagger, 2013) identify affective
characteristics as expressed by statements of
opinions, beliefs or an assessment of worth. When the
affective aspects are embbeded into the education
system, it becomes a set of learning process that
concern with learners’ social-individual
development, feelings, emotions, morals, ethics
(Beane, 1990).
These aspects should not been neglected from the
curriculum. The inclusion of affective components
within the learning process can enhance the whole
student rather than merely focusing upon cognitive
development. In supporting this, a research conducted
by Ferguson (2006) on primary education students
proved that when school curriculum focuses solely
upon the cognitive realm, the uneven development of
the other domains may be enhanced, thus
emphasizing the child’s feeling of being ‘out of sync’
with his or her peers. From this the authors believe
that educators need to incorporate strategies aimed at
balancing the affective and cognitive learning aspects
for a balanced educational outcome.
One important strategies in fulfilling the students
affective needs is through interpersonal
communication between teachers and their students.
Most teachers attempt to satisfy the academic needs
of the students. They feel an educational commitment
or obligation to fulfil these needs, but other student
needs such as affective needs often are neglected.
However some teachers try to communicate with their
students to assist them to satisfy their personal and
interpersonal needs. They have been aware that if a
student’s personal and interpersonal needs are not
met, the academic needs may never be met either
(Richmond, Wrench, & Gorham, 2009).
From the aforementioned rationales, This paper
attemps to measure how students affectively feel to
the learning process that they have experienced in the
classroom. It is expected that the results of students’
affective level and their evaluation toward their
teachers can serve as a basis in determining future
Effendi, R. and Sukmayadi, V.
Communication and Students’ Needs - Measuring Students’ Affect toward Teaching and Learning Process in Higher Education.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sociology Education (ICSE 2017) - Volume 1, pages 511-515
ISBN: 978-989-758-316-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
511

learning contents that can satisfy both cognitive and
affective needs of the students.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The current study focuses on students’ affect and
teacher evaluation. In this part the authors would like
to review some references and other works related to
the study.
2.1 Affective Learning
As previously mentioned, Affective domains are
more often associated with a taxonomy introduced
first by Karthwohl, Bloom, and Masia (1964). It is
called affective taxonomy because it is based on the
principle of internalization between both behaviors
and values in an individual. This Internalization is the
basic concept for understanding the taxonomy
because the more values and attitudes are internalized
the more it affects one's behavior.
These values and attitudes components then were
categorized by them into five levels of hierarchical
taxanomy. They are ranged from receiving
(awareness or willingness to attend to an instructional
message), responding (willingness to respond and/or
actively engage instruction), valuing (seeing the
significance of a particular behaviour, idea, object, or
phenomenon, organizing (comparing and contrasting
competing value systems in an effort to relate and
synthesize values), and characterization by a value or
value set (value system, characteristic life style).
The set of categories was the underlying support
for the authors in the current study to measure the
affective learning experienced by the students. As
mentioned by , (Thweatt & Wrench, 2015) Affective
learning should be viewed as multidimensional with
a series of measures that tackle various aspects of the
construct and should also cover the internal value
changes that persist long after the learning event
occurs. Moreover it should be clear then that students’
affective experiences in the classroom impact their
subsequent behaviours, perceptions, and outcomes in
important ways. Thus, despite not measuring
affective learning itself, the assessment of students’
affective experiences serves to operationalize an
important variable for investigation (Bolkan, 2015).
Based on these assumptions, the authors then conduct
the study by measuring the affective learning based
on the students perception toward their learning
experience.
2.2 Teacher Evaluation
This study also take teachers or lecturers performance
as the center of attention. In this case, the students
affect toward their teachers/lecturers is measured.
One of the reasons to include teachers’ performance
as part of the measurement is that a teacher is a
prominent stakeholder in the learning process. That
is why in order to improve student learning, an
evaluation becomes a must for improving teacher
practice.
As argued by Goe and Little from the National
Education Association (2017), the core purpose of
teacher assessment and evaluation should be to
reinforce the knowledge, skills, emotions, and
classroom practices of professional educators. This
goal serves to promote student growth and learning
while also inspiring great teachers to remain in the
classroom.
Teachers need to be evaluated to see the teacers
performance and how they can relate to their students
affectively. Evaluation concerns itself with more than
how well a teacher teaches. It is also about how a
teacher works with the classes of students that make
up a teacher’s teaching assignments. Teaching also
concerns itself with the rapport a teacher has with the
whole class, and not just with those in the class who
understand and comport themselves in the manner
thought by the teacher to be most appropriate
(Coulombe, 2011).
In other words, a teacher’s responsibilities should
include respect for all students, attention to best
teaching practices, and dedication to the cause of
teaching all of the students in class so that they will
achieves mastery.
2.3 Related Studies
Numerous previous studies indicate that affective
component and teachers communicating style are two
of the most influencing factors in fulfilling the
students’ needs in any level of education including in
a higher education setting.
The authors initial study on freshmen students
communication anxiety indicates that one of the
factors that can ease their anxiety is the teachers
interpersonal skills (Effendi & Sukmayadi, 2016).
The study analyzed fresmen students communication
apprehension from 11 departments. The conclusion
showed that one of the important factors aside from
having a suitable academic environment is the
fulfillment of students' affective needs.
In case of affective learning measurement, a team
of researcher from Texas Shave analyzed how
ICSE 2017 - 2nd International Conference on Sociology Education
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affective domain can be measured using writing
assessment. He employed content analysis of 83
reflective writing samples was used to analyze
affective learning at the levels of receiving,
responding, valuing, organization, and
characterization University (Barry L, Kim, and
Felton, 2006. The results indicated that that some
students expressed affective learning at higher levels
of the affective taxonomy and increased their level of
reflective writing in the process.
In addition, Smith, Mann and Shephard (2011)
argued that the affective assessment should consist of
the abilities categorization (to receive, to respond, to
value, to organise and to internalize) provides an
excellent and forward-looking framework within
which to explore the measurement of affective
attributes. Related to the current study, the authors
will analyze not only the student’s affective domain
but also evaluate the teachers performance based on
the students perspective.
3 METHODS
The study is quantitative by nature and the authors
have employed survey method in collecting the data.
The sample consist of 886 undergraduate students in
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (Indonesia
University of Education or UPI). The samples were
randomly selected to take the survey from all eight
faculties in the university. The faculties are Faculty of
Education Science (FIP), Faculty of Social Science
Education (FPIPS), Faculty of Languages and
Literature Education (FPBS), Faculty of Mathematics
and Natural Science Education (FPMIPA), Faculty of
Technology and Vocational Skills Education (FPTK),
Faculty of Economics and Business (FPEB) and
lastly, the Faculty of Arts and Design Education
(FPSD). All students voluntarily participated in the
study.
In analyzing the data the authors used the
affective learning and teacher evaluation assessment
scale developed by McCroskey, J. C. (1994). The
instrument consist of 16 items. It has four categories
(each with four bipolar scales). The four measures
are; (1) Affect toward content measures, (2) Affect
toward classes for students in this content, (3) Affect
toward instructor measure, (4) Affect toward taking
courses with the specific instructor. As emphasized
by McCroskey (1994), the first two measures can also
be applied together as a measure of affective
Learning. In similar fashion, the third and fourth
measures can be jointly used as a measure of
Instructor Evaluation. The instrument was distributed
to the students, and they circled the number on each
items that best represent their feelings.
All of the categories were assessed and in
computing score on the measures, the authors used
the scoring formula by McCroskey (1994) after the
total score is collected for each of the measures, the
next step is scoring for affective learning and
instructor evaluation. The affective learning score is
resulted from summing up the total score of "affect
toward content" and "affect toward classes in the
particular content". Then, for the teacher evaluation,
the score is obtained from summing up "Affect
toward instructor" and "Affect toward taking classes
with this instructor". The final score is ranged from
20 (bad) to 85 and above (Very Good).
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The McCroskey (1994) instrument measures
students’ attitudes toward (1) instructor of the course
(teacher evaluation), (2) content of the course
(affective learning), along with measures of higher
order levels of student affect, (3) taking additional
classes in the subject matter, and (4) taking additional
classes with the teacher. Dimensions two and three
are in line with Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia’s
(1956) conceptualization of the affective domain in
learning while dimensions one and four represent
teacher evaluation. The following figure 1 is the
measure of affective learning.
Figure 1: Affective learning measure.
Communication and Students’ Needs - Measuring Students’ Affect toward Teaching and Learning Process in Higher Education
513

Regarding to the current study, the results of the
initial affective measurement are described in the
following table 1:
Table 1: Measuring results.
Faculty Toward
Content
Toward
Teacher
Future
Content
Future
Teacher
FIP
20.38 18.34 22.46 18.34
FPIPS
23.4 16.5 24 18.2
FPBS
22.53 16.23 26.32 18.03
FPEB
22 12.77 22.5 16.59
FPOK
24 12.27 24.62 17.76
FPMIPA
21.53 19.31 22.66 19.83
FPTK
22.23 16.45 23.68 19
FPSD
22 23.33 26.5 20
The table represents the partial score based on the
four categories. It can be seen that in terms of students
affect toward the class content, the faculty of sport
science (FPOK) got the highest score by 24. While
the faculty of Arts and design (FPSD) achieved the
highest rank for students affect toward their
instructors.
However, as mentioned previously, the scoring
for affective learning and teacher evaluation is
separated. The score above is the partial score. It does
not mean that the faculty with the highest score get
the highest affective learning level.
Upon computing the partial score, the scoring of
teacher evaluation and affective learning can be then
calculated. The sum of "affect toward content" and
"affect toward classes in the particular content" is for
the affective learning score. Furthermore, the total
sum of "Affect toward instructor" and "Affect toward
taking classes with this instructor" recorded as the
score for teacher evaluation. The result of the
calculation can be seen in the next table 2.
Table 2: Affective learning and teacher evaluation.
Faculty Affective
Learning
Teacher
Evaluation
Sum
FIP
42.84 36.68 79.52
FPIPS
47.4 34.7 82.1
FPBS
48.85 34.26 83.11
FPEB
44.5 29.36 73.86
FPOK
48.62 30.03 78.65
FPMIPA
44.19 39.14 83.33
FPTK
45.91 35.45 81.36
FPSD
48.5 43.33 91.83
In determining the overall score, all of the two
subscores were added and the scoring range should be
between 30 and 100 with the following interpretation:
a) Scores between 83 and 100 indicate a high
level of students affect.
b) Scores between 55 and 83 indicate a moderate
level of students affect.
c) Scores between 30 and 55 indicate a low level
of students affect.
According to the results derived from the
Affective learning and teacher evaluation
measurements, it can be seen that most of the faculty
scored a moderate level of students affect. Five out
of the eight faculties received a score which range
from 73.86 (FPEB) to 82.10 (FPIPS).
In spite of the moderate rank achieved by the
faculty of economics and business education (FPEB),
they got the lowest score among the other faculties.
This is due to the low score of student affect toward
their lecturers. As suggested by Richmond, Wrench,
and Gorham (2009), when the instructors' control,
social, and affection performance are not met the
student’s intellectual, academic, and interpersonal
communication skills, the student affect toward the
class might suffer.
Moving on to the higher rank of the measurement
scores, it is noticeable that the faculty of arts and
design education (FPSD) gets the highest score with
91.83.
While the score for the faculty of mathematics and
Science education (83.33) is roughly equal to that of
the faculty of language education and literature
(83.11). What is interesting with FPSD, although
they did not gain the highest score in affective
learning rank, their students affect toward the
lecturers is much higher than the other faculties.
Thus, this study suggest that teachers’
performance play a significant role in developing a
more affective learning. All of the faculties in the
high level cluster are also contributed by the high
students’ appreciation toward their lecturers.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the measure is beneficial to determine how
students affectively feel in our classroom. A good
learning system along with the lecturers’ competent
interpersonal skills proved to be the key factor in
shaping a suitable affective learning.
It is also expected that the study can contribute in
providing useful initial data for higher education
institutions to develop a learning program focusing on
affective learning. Moreover the measurement can
also be employed as an instrument for evaluating the
teachers or lecturers performance.
For further research, the authors suggest to
elaborate more on the topic of why they perceived
that why toward the class content and the lecturers. It
ICSE 2017 - 2nd International Conference on Sociology Education
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is suggested that the results can be used as the starting
point to conduct a qualitative study to explore the
subtle meanings beyond the students’ responses.
Finally, students who feel their teachers as able to
satisfy some of their affective needs are tend to be
more satisfied with their lecturer, the course, and
eventually the university as a whole.
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