Sentiment Analysis of Students' Feedback Using the VADER Model for Teaching Process Assessment

Abstract

The evaluation of the teaching activity by students serves as a way of assessing its quality and efficiency in higher education institutions. The objective of this type of evaluation is to provide valuable insight into the quality of the teaching act and into the areas in which the teaching practices might be improved both by teachers and other interested parties. This paper presents an approach to the analysis of sentiment expressed in student evaluations based on a mixed evaluation model with general qualitative criteria and using a general sentiment analysis model, the VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) model. The article examines the extent to which such a general model for sentiment analysis can be used, without further modifications, for sentiment analysis in this particular domain.

Keywords

• sentiment analysis
• students’ feedback
• vader model
• teaching evaluation