Finding regularities in courses evaluation with K-means clustering

This paper presents an analysis about the courses evaluation made by university students together with their results in the corresponding exams. The analysis concerns students and courses of a Computer Science program of an Italian University from 2001/2002 to 2007/2008 academic years. Before the end of each course, students evaluate different aspects of the course, such as the organization and the teaching. Evaluation data and the results obtained by students in terms of grades and delays with which they take their exams can be collected and reorganized in an appropriate way. Then we can use clustering techniques to analyze these data thus show possible correlation between the evaluation of a course and the corresponding average results as well as regularities among groups of courses over the years. The results of this type of analysis can possibly suggest improvements in the teaching organization.