Developing and Validating the IDEAL Course Evaluation Scale (IDEAL-CES) to measure dialogic, inclusive, and digitally enhanced learning in higher education.
Yıldırım Hoş, H., Bülbül, Y., Ucan, S., & Karataş, İ. (2025). Developing and Evaluating the IDEAL Pathways Pedagogic Strategy: From Principles to Practice. Proceedings of ICERI2025 Conference, 3202-3211.
A comprehensive validation study of the IDEAL-CES instrument, designed to assess student-centred pedagogical transformation in higher education.
Higher education is shifting towards student-centred models, yet universities lack robust tools to evaluate these integrated pedagogies. This study fills a critical gap by developing a validated scale to measure the impact of Dialogic, Inclusive, and Digitally Enhanced strategies on student learning.
The study employed a rigorous two-stage validation process with 1,307 students.
Phase 1: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA, n=589).
Phase 2: Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA, n=718).
Reliability was verified using Cronbach’s α, McDonald’s ω, and AVE.
The final 28-item scale (IDEAL-CES) confirmed a coherent 4-factor structure:
The decision-tree analysis revealed a critical hierarchy in pedagogical effectiveness. Dialogic and Inclusive Teaching is the primary driver of positive evaluations. Digital tools act as a "multiplier," differentiating good courses from excellent ones only when inclusive practices are already high.
"Technology cannot fix a lack of dialogue, but it can amplify a good conversation."
Visualize the decision path of student satisfaction. Adjust all four scale variables to "grow" the path through the hierarchical CHAID tree nodes based on the study's statistical model.
Primary Driver (F=1378). Foundation of quality.
Secondary Multiplier (F=116). Active only if DIT > 44%.
Correlated, but not a primary decision node.
Correlated, but not a primary decision node.
DIT is below 44%. This acts as a bottleneck. Increasing digital tools will have minimal impact until dialogic teaching improves.