Example chart report content in course evaluations
Reporting on the feedback is essential for key stakeholders in your organization to identify actionable items and make high-level decisions. Visualizations can draw attention to important areas in the data and lead you to insights. In this document, we will walk you through a variety of options for visualizing data in reports as well as the steps and requirements needed.
Before consulting this document, it is recommended to know the fundamentals of setting up a standard report. To learn more, see Create a new report.
About this document
- Only contains report content with chart visualizations.
- Primarily used in reports for course evaluations.
- Examples in this document are used mainly in individual and group by reports.
- To view report content with tabular visualizations, please refer to Example tabular report content in course evaluations.
Common terms in reporting for course evaluations
Common terms that are used when creating reports for course evaluations:
Datasource - Also known as a table or “view”, a datasource is a dataset that is applied towards a survey campaign. It can contain the survey respondent information, including students’ or instructors’ names, email addresses and other demographic data that will be useful in the analysis (user datasource). A separate datasource can contain items to be evaluated, such as a list of courses in course/subject evaluations (object datasource).
Course evaluation - The typical course evaluation refers broadly to the student end of class summative survey in a college/university. Other common terms used for course evaluation include "student evaluation", "learning feedback", "student feedback", "paper evaluation", "module evaluation", and "teaching effectiveness".
Report block - A report block is the container of data that generates specific types of content (tables and/or charts) in reports. For example, the Question report block presents response data for a specific question or set of questions while the Frequency report block displays the number of times a particular answer was selected.
Rollover report - A rollover report provides an overall aggregate calculation of all results collected for all subjects or secondary subjects in a project. They are useful if you want to get an overall aggregated view of survey results.
Group by report - Similar to a rollover report except that data will be aggregated according to various predefined groups within an organization (courses, instructors, department, etc.).
Individual report - Tailored for evaluating an individual person or thing, each stakeholder within an institution can receive their own custom report containing only response data relative to them (instructors).
Group elements - Group elements help to contextualize the results in a report and provide different methods of data calculations for each group in a project. They offer more granularity and greater flexibility in terms of displaying the data and, ultimately, help the report viewer to make sense of the data in a report. Some examples include the average of rater group element which will give the average for student responses, and the breakdown by rater group element which enables the user to see the results broken down by students.
Norms/benchmarks - Norms or benchmarks are used as a reference. They are often based on aggregate data analysis, such as overall instructor, department, school or university results, against which scores can be compared.
Academic period - An academic period is the specific duration of time in which a course and/or instructor is evaluated. Some common academic periods are measured in reporting either by year or semester.
Question category - A question category is a grouping of questions that share a common theme whether it be related to courses, instructors, or specific skills. An example of a question category would be the single selection table question "The instructor for this course..." which is followed by a series of statements that reflect on several different aspects of the question category itself, in this case being the instructor for the course.
Quantitative analysis
Analyze the response data using statistical calculations.
Response frequency chart for multiple selection question
Display the frequency of responses broken down by a chart for a question with multiple selections.
Response frequency charts for multiple Likert questions
Display the frequency of responses broken down by charts for all questions in a question category.
Question mean chart for multiple Likert questions
Display the mean of student responses for multiple Likert questions broken down by multiple horizontal bar charts.
Summary question mean chart (version 1)
Display the mean of student responses for all question categories with a total score broken down by a clustered horizontal bar chart.
Summary question mean chart (version 2)
Display the mean of student responses compared to the departmental average for all question categories broken down by a clustered horizontal bar chart.
Summary question mean chart (version 3)
Display the mean of student responses compared to the departmental and university averages for all question categories broken down by a radar chart.
NPS question chart
Display the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which is a calculated value between the promoters (percent positive rating) and the detractors (percent negative rating) for a question.
To learn how to change report block colors for your NPS question chart, see Customize report block colors for group elements.
Qualitative analysis
Analyze the response data using subjective judgment.
Blue text analytics chart
Display a "theme cloud" style graphic of themes that displays the relative frequency of themes in the comments data. The more frequently a theme appears in the comments, the larger and more centered the theme is represented in the word cloud.
To create Blue Text Analytics charts, a BTA T&L dictionary must be applied beforehand.
Demographics
Analyze and breakdown particular demographics of the student rater group.
Demographics analysis chart
Display demographic information related to students and their responses such as department, GPA range, and residency status.
- In the user datasource, there must be a field to represent the type of demographics data you wish to display.
- The demographics analysis charts demonstrated were created in a rollover report.
Cross-tabulation
Analyze the relationship between student rater demographics and multiple Likert questions.
Demographic vs. demographic chart
Display a chart that has cross-tabulated data between different student rater demographics.
Demographic vs. question statistic chart
Display a chart that has cross-tabulated data between a student rater demographic and question statistic.
Question statistic vs. demographic chart
Display a chart that has cross-tabulated data between a question statistic and a student rater demographic.
Question statistic vs. question statistic chart
Display a chart that has cross-tabulated data between two question statistics.
Trend analysis
In order to track and analyze trends between different academic periods (years or semesters) in your institution, you will need to map all projects from each academic period to a master project so that data can be analyzed and displayed together. This will provide you with unique insights to identify any trends in improvement.
- Project mapping can be applied to any type of report (individual, group by and rollover).
- Not all visualizations types (report blocks) support trend analysis. This section highlights the ones that do.
- Question bank question types are not supported for trend analysis in reports.
- For best insights, larger data sets are recommended. Aggregate data found in a report grouped by course, instructor or department, for example, can often help uncover trends.
- The Blue Dashboard is an alternative solution built from the ground up with trend analysis in mind. It supports filtering, breakdowns and thresholds for safe querying of each stakeholder's respective results. To learn more, see Blue Dashboard (Overview).
To view specific steps on how to map your projects, questions, and rater groups all in one report, see Map projects together for reporting.
Response frequency charts for multiple selection question per academic period
Display the frequency of responses broken down by a chart for a question with multiple selections across different academic periods.
Summary question mean chart per academic period
Display the mean of student responses for all question categories across different academic periods.
Agreement scale question chart per academic period
Display the agreement scale response (percent disagree, agree, and neutral rating) from a single question across different academic periods.
To learn how to change report block colors for your agreement scale question chart, see Customize report block colors for group elements.
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