Gregory B. Merrill’s research while affiliated with Saint Mary's College of California and other places

We examine the impact of university student burnout on academic achievement. With a longitudinal sample of working undergraduate university business and economics students, we use a two-step analytical process to estimate the efficient frontiers of student productivity given inputs of labour and capital and then analyse the potential determinants of technical efficiency. Employing a data envelopment analysis (DEA), we find that student efficiency varies by type of course, with quantitative courses such as economics, having the highest level of dispersion. The longitudinal analysis indicates that both university-related exhaustion and work-related exhaustion are negatively related to student productivity.

We examined the interaction between academic burnout and work-related burnout for a sample of working undergraduate university students. Using a longitudinal design we found that the factors of burnout (Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Efficacy) change significantly over the semester. In addition, the study suggests there are distinct differences in how academic burnout shifts over the semester versus work-related burnout. Whereas academic Exhaustion and Efficacy increase over the semester, work-related Exhaustion and Efficacy significantly decrease. An analysis using a system of simultaneous equations was performed to estimate the contribution of various predictor variables, as well as the simultaneous interactions between academic and work-related burnout.

In this study we investigate the underlying relational structure between student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETEs) and achievement of student learning outcomes in 116 business related courses. Utilizing traditional statistical techniques, a neural network analysis and a Bayesian data reduction and classification algorithm, we find little or no support for the validity of SETEs as a general indicator of teaching effectiveness or student learning. In fact, the underlying structure appears to be non-linear and possibly negatively bimodal where the most effective instructors are within the middle percentiles of student course ratings, while instructors receiving ratings in the top quintile or the bottom quintile are associated with significantly lower levels of student achievement.

We examine the validity of peer observation of classroom instruction for purposes of faculty evaluation. Using both a multi-section course sample and a sample of different courses across a university's School of Business and Economics we find that the results of annual classroom observations of faculty teaching are significantly and positively correlated with student learning outcome assessment measures. This finding supports the validity of classroom observation as an assessment of teaching effectiveness. The research also indicates that student ratings of teaching effectiveness (SETEs) were less effective at measuring student learning than annual classroom observations by peers.

This study examines whether faculty research productivity is associated with student learning. Unlike previous studies that define learning by student evaluations of teaching effectiveness, the authors specifically measure teaching effectiveness by a standardized student learning outcome measure developed by a School of Business at a US university. Using a Bayesian data reduction algorithm and regression techniques, it was found that faculty research activity is positively and significantly related to teaching effectiveness.