When Student Ratings are considered as one source of data for assessment of teaching, it is also important to interpret the numbers in light of other information that may help explain them.

For example, open-ended comments that are collected with numerical ratings can shed light on student responses. One instructor who received low ratings for "Course Organization," for instance, found a number of open-ended comments on the fact that he "jumped around in the book" too much. In this case, he had followed the syllabus closely, but realized from the added context of the open-ended comments that many students were depending more on the textbook than the syllabus as the chief organizing principle for the course.

Added context for Student Ratings can also be found in midterm student feedback, collected earlier in the course, or from information gathered through other student feedback. Instructors who have been monitoring students' learning and perceptions throughout the course often find that they have more insight into students' ratings at the end of the course.

Appropriate comparisons with other courses also provide context for interpreting student ratings. Students tend to respond differently in larger classes than they do in smaller ones, for example, and they tend to respond different in classes that are required than they do in elective classes. For these reasons, comparisons among cases that are relatively similar are more meaningul than comparisons of widely varying cases.