Report access & use of data

What you need to know

Report access and use of subject evaluation data is governed by policies established by the Subject Evaluation Advisory Committee (AY2011-2014). Although the Registrar’s Office administers subject evaluations, departments own the data.

Access is limited to the MIT community and reports are available only after final grades have been submitted each term. Responses are de-identified — MIT and Kerberos IDs removed from students’ responses and maintained separately by IS&T for the Registrar’s Office — before reports are released each term.

Report access

Quantitative results are published in the aggregate for members of the MIT community (Touchstone enabled). Evaluated instructors have additional access to open-ended comments about their teaching. Department administrators can access both comments and quantitative results for all subjects in their department. Results may also be shared with other Institute officials with a legitimate educational interest to improve teaching and learning.

We do not publish multi-subject or cross-department comparisons for the following reasons:

Subject evaluations are voluntary not only for students, but also for departments, and not every subject or teacher is evaluated.
There is enormous variety among subjects — required vs. elective, large vs. small, established vs. experimental curriculum, etc.
Results can be misleading without the proper context that only the departments can provide.

Data use

Subject evaluation reports are intended for MIT use only. Instructors who wish to share their own evaluation reports outside of the MIT community (for example, in preparation for an interview) may do so. However, if there are other instructors listed on that report, the instructor must redact their names or get their permission to distribute.

The department head must approve the release of any data beyond the summary reports that we publish.