Faculty members may be interested in performing a thematic analysis on student comments in their evaluation reports. Below are a few suggestions for converting CoursEval reports into a format that can be used for such analyses.
When accessing your course evaluation reports there are three options:
- to view your results in the web browser,
- to download your results as a PDF, or
- to print your results.
While downloading results as a PDF may be helpful for personal record keeping, it may not be conducive for performing a thematic analysis of student comments in open-ended responses. Downloading survey reports as a Word doc is not currently a feature of the CoursEval system, but we recommend copying and pasting unformatted text from evaluation reports into a Word doc or Google Doc to achieve the same results.
To access and transfer survey results to a more user-friendly format, such as a Word document or Google Doc, we recommend following steps:
- Go to “Evaluation Reports” in the Reports menu.
- Check off the courses you would like the data from in the “Include” column.
- If you select multiple courses, the results from each course will be separate.
- Select the “View” button. A new window or tab will open on your web browser with the data from your course survey.
- If you are transferring the data to a Word Doc or Google Doc, you can copy and paste from a PDF, however, we find it easier to select the appropriate content with our cursor when viewing the report in a web browser instead.
- If you are transferring the data to an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets, copying and pasting from a PDF will not work effectively.
- Highlight and copy the responses from the open-ended question, including the question itself.
- Paste the unformatted content into your word processing program of choice. By pasting unformatted text, the answers to the open-ended questions will not be bound by a table and can therefore be easily moved throughout the document. If utilizing a spreadsheet, you can paste normally without selecting unformatted text.
- In a Word document:
- Option 1:
- Right click in the document where you would like the text to appear.
- Select “Paste Special” and then select “Unformatted text.”
- Option 2:
- Paste normally with Ctrl+V (Command+V for Mac) or right click and “Paste”
- Click on the small clipboard and paper icon that has appeared toward the bottom right of the content you have just pasted and select “Keep text only.” You must do this immediately after pasting and before making any additional changes to the document or the ability to change the pasted material to text only will disappear.
- In Google Docs:
- Option 1:
- Right click in the document where you would like the text to appear.
- Select “Paste without formatting.”
- Option 2:
- Paste using the keyboard command normally with Ctrl+Shift+V (Command+Shift+V for Mac).
- In an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Sheet:
- Paste normally with Ctrl+V (Command+V for Mac) or right click and “Paste.”
- It is also possible to copy and paste the entirety of the evaluation report into a spreadsheet using this method rather than only the open-ended responses.
Please also consult the CITLS resource Reviewing Student Course Evaluations for general information on performing thematic analyses on open-ended questions.