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Involving students in QA

This paper discusses student feedback. It examines what student feedback might measure and the best means for achieving it depending on the context, e.g. the various levels in the institution, and the media used, e.g. questionnaires, meetings, etc. The paper raises interesting philosophical and operational questions about feedback and its value.

From work by David Rush and Mike Hart, Winchester University. Retrieve the original work.

 

The usual connotation of involvement is that of getting student feedback.

Why get feedback?

  • for purposes internal to the institution where the feedback would help to improve the quality of the offerings

  • for external audiences, where the institution wished to establish its standing with potential students and external agencies

Range and level of feedback:

  • institution-wide satisfaction surveys (may include non-academic surveys, e.g. catering, accommodation), to

  • module or unit feedback forms for a single subject or programme.


Limitations

Questionnaires

  • may simply support managerial interest if centrally-imposed, may disengage the teacher

  • often anonymous and lacking demographic data. Means no way of correlating response with academic ability.

Staff-student committees

  • representativeness of the student representatives and their ability to communicate with their fellow students.

Informal contact

  • Although they can provide immediate feedback and the prospect of prompt remediation, views expressed informally may not be widely shared and without a record their impact is likely to be limited to few staff.


Size of survey

It may be that the size of the subject group or institution should play a part in deciding how to gain feedback from students, but this does not seem to have been discussed in the literature.


Timing

In a questionnaire at the end of course, students may give higher ratings in their answers to questions about teaching and learning as an expression of their satisfaction with the grade they have received. Equally, some students may feel they cannot give accurate feedback without knowing their grade.

Feedback given at the end of a course does not help existing students.

Response

The presentation of the resulting information needs to be considered carefully as it must satisfy the needs of managers, academic staff and originating students. Overall it seems that responding to student feedback is the least developed part of the whole process.

Issues specific to business

There do not appear to have been research findings that business students require a specific kind of feedback process or course involvement.