How to Read Course Evaluation Reports

Section 1 - Overall Course Evaluation Information
- This section contains overall data for the evaluation.
- For departmental results, comparative data is displayed, including total number of evaluations sent and completed, overall completion percent, and overall mean for entire group.
Section 2 - Provides completion statistics broken down by instructor, course, and section
- For departmental results, these will be in order by instructor’s last name.
Section 3 - Provides sub-scale and overall results broken down by course
- For departmental results, these will be in order by instructor’s last name.
Section 4 - Provides results broken down by question for each course evaluated
- These results include statistics for each question, for each course.
- For departmental results, these will be in order by instructor’s last name.
Section 5 - Provides all short answer question responses
- For departmental results, these will be in order by instructor’s last name, and will often be found on an additional tab within the Excel spreadsheet labeled Comments.

Comparative Values

Section Mean is the mean score for the evaluated section in question.
Course Mean is the mean score for all other sections of the same course, excluding the evaluated section in question. If there are only two sections evaluated, this score will show the mean for the other section.
Group Mean is the mean of all overall section scores on the entire report.
- If your department utilizes more than one evaluation instrument, the scores will not compare across evaluations, but only within the same evaluation instrument.
There may be a small discrepancy between the numbers shown in Sections 3 and 4. These numbers are calculated differently. The values in Section 3 are Mean-of-Means scores, and the values in Section 4 are true averages of scores.