A university question set was developed by a cross-disciplinary group of faculty with facilitation from the Center for Teaching and Learning. This is a core of six widely applicable and well-formed questions: four multiple choice and two open-ended.

Roughly 70% to 80% of the question sets are based on the college, department, or subject of a course. Likewise, those units make the decisions on the bulk of the questions to ask. Departments or subject groups may decide to include or not include additional question sets. Some have used other characteristics, such as type (lab, lec, sem, etc.), course number, or level (e.g., all 400-level courses or all GRAD/UGRD) to define question sets.

There are other question sets that cut across college, department, and subject. The main sets are online, honors, service learning, and summer. In other words, all online courses automatically receive a set of questions from extended studies about the online nature of the course; any classes marked as honors sections receive a set of honors questions; service learning sections get SL questions; summer courses include some summer term questions.

All instructors can create additional questions for a single or multiple courses they teach. Many instructors use this to ask pedagogical or outcome-specific questions. Instructors are notified that they can add their own questions approximately 21 days before the evaluation begins.

Any question set may be identified as an instructor question set. For example, if there are three co-instructors, there will be three instructor question sets in the evaluation with the appropriate instructor name added to those questions. Instructors can only view responses to their instructor question set.