Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET): Clues on how to interpret written feedback

In this paper we present the results of a study covering 218 written comments submitted in the formal university SET questionnaire of two undergraduate physics lectures for engineering students. Concerning the SET-metrics, one of the lectures was rated as critical, while the other lecture had good results. The analysis is based on the praise and criticism framework elaborated by Hyland/Hyland (2001) for written feedback. Our findings, which also relate written feedback to quantitative variables and contrast the results between critical and good evaluations, provide a deeper insight for both, teachers and educational developers, on how to interpret written comments in a quality management process.