CEQuery
The Australian Graduate Survey administered on an annual basis by Graduate Careers Australia contains two open ended questions to capture graduate comments on the best aspects of their course and those aspects most in need of improvement. In 2003, CEQuery was developed with DEEWR funding to provide a tool to analyse the data collected with respect to these questions.
The software categorises the comments into 5 main domains (Outcomes, Staff, Course Design, Assessment and Support) and a further 26 sub domains based on a dictionary of terms.
The Office of Planning and Audit has completed a first phase implementation of this software based on the 2007 AGS survey results. This allows the user to browse the comments or generate hit rate charts by sub/domain filtering by a set of pre determined groups e.g. Course Code, ATSI status, Campus etc.
For example, Figure 1 below illustrates the output of the Comments Browser for a search conducted on all Best Aspect domains for the Bachelor of Human Movement course code only.
Figure 1: Comments Browser
Figure 2: Presentation Chart
Figure 2 is an example of a presentation type chart displaying the percentage of Best Aspect comment hits by domain for the Bachelor of Human Studies whilst grouped into gender categories i.e. 75% of the male Best Aspect comments for this course contained a hit against the domain Course Design.
Please note that data has been cleansed of personal references or offensive content.
For a more comprehensive report on the development of CEQuery and detailed definitions of each of the sub domains please click here todownload the report “Accessing the Student Voice: Using CEQuery to identify what retains graduates and promotes engagement in productive learning in Australian higher education”. (refer to Attachment 1).
If you are interested in finding out more about CEQuery please contact the Office of Planning and Audit on pa@csu.edu.au or phon 84875. We are able to generate output data as requested or alternatively provide you with a copy of the software and relevant files for your own perusal. We welcome feedback on the usefulness of this package.
A general overview of the CEQuery software can be found here.