About the CER Report

Your CER Summary Report is more than a set of numbers. It is a structured opportunity to hear directly from your students about their learning experience — and to use that feedback to inform your teaching. This guide walks you through what the report contains and how to read it.

What is the CER?

The Course Experience Review (CER) replaced the earlier Student Evaluation of Course and Lecturer (SECL) instrument in 2010/11. Unlike its predecessor, the CER is designed as a developmental tool rather than an evaluative one — its primary purpose is to support reflection and improvement, not to rank or judge.

The CER is administered at the end of each semester. Results are returned to the relevant lecturer(s), the Head of Department, and Faculty Deans. The CETL has access to aggregated data only.

The Two-Part Questionnaire

The CER consists of a two-part questionnaire. Students complete both parts at the end of the semester:

Learning Experience

15 items rating how the course was taught — the clarity of communication, quality of feedback, interactions with the lecturer, use of technology, and student engagement. Also includes three open-ended questions.

Course Design

6 items rating the structure of the course — access to the syllabus, quality of learning materials, alignment of content and assessments to learning outcomes, grading criteria, and workload manageability.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Demographics section tell me?

The demographics section provides contextual information about the students who responded:

Total Responses — how many students submitted the survey. This may differ from your class enrolment, as not all students complete the CER.
Student Gender and Age — the distribution of respondents. Useful background context, though not typically a performance indicator.
Percentage of Classes Attended — gives a sense of how engaged the responding students were. A cohort where most students attended the majority of classes is providing feedback from sustained first-hand experience, which generally increases the reliability of ratings.
Frequency of logging into the online course room — indicates how actively students engaged with your e-learning platform (e.g., MyeLearning).

Why do different sections show different response numbers?

It is important to note that student participation in the CER, while encouraged, is voluntary. As such, not every student is guaranteed to answer every question — or indeed every section — of the questionnaire. This means response counts can vary across items within the same report for a number of reasons:

Questions about labs, practicals, and tutorials are only relevant to students who attended those sessions. Students for whom these do not apply would select “Not Applicable,” and are excluded from the calculation for those items.
A student may choose to skip an individual question without selecting any option. Blank responses are not included in any calculations.
The attendance and online course room login questions form a separate section of the questionnaire, which not all students may complete.

For this reason, the n (number of valid responses) shown alongside each item is just as important as the mean score itself. A mean derived from a small number of responses should always be interpreted with greater caution than one drawn from a larger, more representative sample.

Who has access to my CER report?

You (the lecturer), your Head of Department, and your Faculty Dean have access to your individual report. The CETL only has access to aggregated data across courses and cannot see your individual results.

When will I receive my report?

CER Summary Reports become available to lecturers once the review of results is completed. This typically occurs approximately two months after the end of each semester. Reports are made available through Qualtrics, where you can log in and access your results directly.

Next: Reading the Numbers