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Using Qualitative Data from SET for the Betterment of Education
Along with numerical indicators, student evaluations of teaching (SET) can be expressed in the form of comments. Open questions provide deeper, value-based, and reflective descriptions of teaching with a free response about the positive and negative sides of students’ experience of study. This feedback can be collected using paper-based or web-based questionnaires. In-class, paper-based evaluations usually demonstrate higher response rates, but online tools create an environment allows wider, more reflective, and more emotional comments. Raw qualitative data such as comments need additional coding and interpretation to provide useful data for decision making as students consider good and bad teaching in different ways. In this short paper we discuss anonymously collected online comments written by students at HSE University (Moscow) and their practical meaning for university governance in teaching.