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Unit 20 : Methods of Feedback for Students

• identifying good practice Notes
• measuring student satisfaction
• contributing to staff development.
Although overwhelmingly concerned with a notion of quality enhancement, purposes nevertheless
differed in emphasis : for example according to whether student feedback was considered to be a
part of the student learning process or rather a commentary on that process; according to whether
it was seen as being primarily about whether programme objectives were being achieved or
providing an opportunity to critique those objectives.
Underlying these differences of emphasis could be different conceptions of student feedback.
While some people equated student feedback with student satisfaction, this view was by no
means universal. Student feedback could be accounts by students of their learning styles and
study methods - clearly potentially valuable to their teachers but not calling for evaluation or
opinion from the students. Student feedback could be student views about whether their objectives
had been met. While such information is clearly related to ‘satisfaction’ it is not necessarily the
same as feedback on satisfaction with the teaching and learning processes of specific programmes,
modules or services.

20.3 Different Aspects of Feedback for Students

20.3.1 A range of uses and users
It is of course likely that different users will have different purposes for student feedback. The
class teacher will look to feedback hopefully for endorsement of his or her teaching approach
but also for guidance on what worked and what did not and way in which it might be improved
next time. The class teacher might also be more interested to know how far the students understood
what was being taught than whether they liked it or were satisfied. A course or programme team
might be looking to student feedback for evidence that learning objectives had been met, that the
programme as a whole cohered. Departmental or other committees might be looking at student
feedback alongside a range of quality indicators as part of institutional quality assurance
arrangements. They might be particularly interested in trend data or comparisons between
programmes or in using feedback to understand better the implications of data from other
sources, for example a higher than expected drop-out rate or some particular criticisms by an
external examiner. For current students, the purpose might simply be to express a view, positive
or negative. For students considering taking a programme or module, feedback from previous
cohorts of students could aid module choice.
20.3.2 The need for discussion
To this range of perfectly legitimate purposes of different uses and users of feedback data is the
possibility that the purposes of the exercise have been lost in time, that it has become just
another of the institution’s rituals, that engagement with the activity has become largely an act of
compliance, that feedback is collected but little is done with it, and that those involved in the
process see little point in it, have few expectations that change will occur as a result of it. Where
such a situation occurs, there is of course little point in collecting feedback data at all.
Thus, we would emphasise the value of discussion about the purposes of student feedback - and
discussion at suitable intervals to check that purposes have not changed. This should include all
who are involved, whether providing data, analysing and interpreting data, or using data. The
purposes of the users will have primacy and discussion will reveal whether different users have
different purposes, whether they are compatible with each other, whether they can be achieved
in relation to the time and resources available, including the time required of the data providers-
the students themselves. Where institutions wish to have clarity and consistency about purposes
across the whole institution, the need to obtain wide understanding and agreement will be
essential. More devolved arrangements are probably easier to achieve and more likely to generate

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