Setting Up Longitudinal Reporting in CES

Role required: CES Administrator

Overview

Longitudinal Reporting allows instructors to track trends in student feedback across terms and course sections. When enabled, instructors can view how their mean scores on specific survey questions have changed over time directly within Instructor Insights.  NOTE: Longitudinal Reporting is part of the Instructor Insights module, so it is only available to institutions that have the Course Evaluations & Surveys AI Add On feature.

Setting up Longitudinal Reporting requires completing four configuration steps in order. Each step is a prerequisite for the next.

Before You Begin

Confirm the following before proceeding:

• You have CES Administrator access.
• Your institution's course section naming follows a consistent pattern (you will need this to configure course grouping in Step 2).
• You have a list of your institution's terms, including their official start and end dates.

Step 1: Set Up Terms

Terms are the institutional timeframes — such as "Fall 2025" or "Spring 2026" — that organize course sections for reporting. Each term must have a name, an institution Term ID, and valid start and end dates before it can be used in Longitudinal Reporting.

To review existing terms:

1. Navigate to Account → Site Settings → Manage Terms.
2. Review the list of terms. Any term missing a start or end date will display a warning in red italic text. A banner at the top of the page will also appear if any terms are missing dates.

Note: If your institution has used CES previously, your existing terms have been migrated automatically into the new term management system. Migrated terms will not have dates assigned — you will need to add them before proceeding.

To add dates to an existing term:

1. Locate the term in the grid.
2. Click the three-dot menu in the Actions column and select Edit.
3. Enter the Start Date and End Date.
4. Click Save.

To create a new term:

1. Click Create Term in the top right.
2. Enter a Term Name, Term ID, Start Date, and End Date. Term Name and Term ID must each be unique across your institution.
3. Click Save.

Repeat until all terms your institution uses are present and fully dated. The missing-dates banner will disappear once all terms have both a start and end date.

To view projects associated with a term:

Click the project count number in the Projects column to open a flyout listing all projects assigned to that term. Project names link directly to their Project Details page.

Step 2: Configure and Enable Courses Reporting

Courses Reporting groups individual course sections into Course-level objects, which is what allows the system to aggregate results across sections and terms. Longitudinal Reporting cannot be enabled until Courses Reporting is active.

1. Navigate to Account → Results Settings.
2. Click on the Course Results tab click Set Up Courses Reporting.
3. In the configuration flyout, complete the following fields:
   • Course Identifier: Select whether courses are identified by Course Code or Course ID (SIS identifier).
   • Course Grouping Pattern: Enter the pattern that defines how sections roll up into a course. Use # for fixed characters and ? for variable characters.
     Example: If your section codes follow the format SUBJ-123-04 and sections should be grouped by SUBJ-123, enter #########?? (nine fixed characters "SUBJ-123-" and two variable characters "04").
   • Include course title and instructors in course reports: Check this box if you would like this information included in course-level reports.
4. Click Save.
5. On the Results Settings page, check the Enable Courses Reporting checkbox. The card status will update to ENABLED.

Important:  Saving the configuration does not enable Courses Reporting. You must check the enable checkbox separately.

Very Important: For this feature to work as intended, you must have a consistent course code or unique ID structure to serve as the foundation for your logic. Inconsistent structures, such as having three-digit course codes for some courses and four-digit course codes for other courses, will restrict functionality to the specific courses where you have manually configured groupings. In this scenario, the feature will only display either the three-digit or the four-digit codes based on your specific grouping setup.

Step 3: Enable Longitudinal Reporting

Once Courses Reporting is enabled and at least one fully-dated term exists, Longitudinal Reporting can be activated.

1. On the Account → Results Settings → Course Results (tab) page, locate the Longitudinal Reporting card.
2. Check the Enable Longitudinal Reporting checkbox. The card status will update to ENABLED.

Instructors will now see the Compare Mean Across Terms option within quantitative questions in Instructor Insights.

Step 4: Assign Terms to Projects

Each project must be assigned a term for its sections to appear in Longitudinal Reporting. This is done within each project's settings.

1. Open a project and navigate to Project Properties.
2. Locate the Term field.
3. Select the appropriate term from the dropdown. Only terms with valid dates will appear. The list is sorted reverse-chronologically and supports type-ahead search.
4. Save the project.

Repeat for each project you wish to include in Longitudinal Reporting. Projects without an assigned term will not appear in longitudinal views.

Note: Projects that previously had a term stored as free text have been automatically mapped to the corresponding Term Object where a match exists. Review your projects to confirm assignments are correct, and update any that were not automatically mapped.

Maintaining Your Configuration

Editing a term updates it across all projects associated with that term. Take care when changing term names or dates, as this may affect reporting.

Editing Courses Reporting settings triggers a rebuild of course aggregations across your institution. Allow time for this process to complete before reviewing results.

Disabling Courses Reporting will automatically disable Longitudinal Reporting. Your configuration settings will be retained if you re-enable it later.