A Visualization Technique for Course Evaluations and Other Likert Scale Data

Abstract

Course evaluation is one of the primary ways of collecting feedback from students at NDSU. Since almost every student in every course submits one at the end of the semester, it generates a lot of data. The data is summarized into text based reports with emphasis on average rating of each question. At one page per course, analyzing these reports can be overwhelming. Furthermore, it is very difficult to identify patterns in the text reports. We combine heat maps and small multiples to introduce a visualization of the data that allows for easier comparison between courses, departments, etc. We defined a data format for storing and transmitting the data. We built an interactive web application that consumes the aforementioned data format and generates the visualizations. We simulated reference data to facilitate interpretation of the visualizations. Finally, we discussed how our research can be applied more generally to Likert scale data.