Over the last decade universities across the world have been grappling with quality and quality assurance issues. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to identify the level of necessity and practices of teaching quality in higher education in Iran. University Teacher Evaluation Questionnaire (UTEQ) was administered to student at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM). This instrument operationalizes four main dimensions in evaluation of teaching in higher education: Teaching plan, teaching implementation, teaching evaluation and interpersonal relationship. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study that identifies the level of necessity and practices of teaching quality in higher education in Iran from undergrad student point of view. This study was performed on 196 undergrad students from FUM was selected out to collect data on the level of necessity and practices of teaching quality by their perception. Scores were analyzed by taking into consideration both Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean) and inferential statistics (T test and ANOVA). Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between the level of quality teaching needed and the level of quality teaching existed and teaching plan was perceived by majority of the respondents as top priority in the aspects of quality teaching. This study recommended that staff development should emphasize identification of needs of the faculty members as well as the need of the education system in an effort to upgrade the academic members’ skills and knowledge in order to meet the changing needs in the education system.

Keywords