Students as consumers: the importance of student feedback in the quality assurance process
Fiona Church, University of Derby
Student feedback and evaluation of provision is an essential part of the quality assurance process. It is a crucial factor in ensuring and/or maintaining student satisfaction. The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) highlights the need for dialogue between teaching teams and their students, and the law benchmark statement also requires the student to reflect on the process of learning.
Whilst the above relates to students receiving feedback it also implies the need for reflection and the possibility of giving feedback. Staff and educators recognise the importance of the process of evaluation, however students can often feel ambivalent about completing yet another course or module questionnaire. This issue becomes particularly acute when students are not convinced of the value of such activity - particularly if they don't know what resulted from it. How then, can we ensure that student feedback is given, that it is not too onerous a process, that students see the value of it and that action results?
Increasingly, students are becoming more focused on the issue of the student as a 'consumer' of educational services. Reasons for this include the imposition of fees, the increase in litigation and willingness to go to court, pressure on students to get a good result in as short a timescale as possible and the impact of codes of practice and benchmarking.
The growing trends of 'customer sovereignty' and increased education on student rights and entitlements means that any lecturer needs to know what their 'customers' want and need.In addition to the consumer pressure from students, academics face other pressures which may increase the need for student feedback and evaluation.
The QAA highlights the need for dialogue between teaching teams and their students.
“ There should be an evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures taken to maintain and enhance the quality and standards of provision. Reviewers will be particularly interested in the effectiveness of evaluation and use of quantitative data and qualitative feedback in a strategy of enhancement and continuous improvement. ”
In Annex I guidelines are given for the conduct of meetings with students and questions to be asked. These include:
- how are student views sought?
- are students represented on committees? If so, what is their role?
- are students influential?
- can they provide examples?
- did students make a contribution to the self-evaluation?
The law benchmark statement states that:
“ A student should demonstrate a basic ability...to reflect on his or her own learning, and to seek and make use of feedback. ”
Feedback methods at the University of Derby
Student feedback at the University of Derby is gathered in a number of ways:
- student questionnaires
- staff/student liaison committee
- tutor system
- programme committees
- quality forums
- OMST - observation, monitoring and support of teaching
- annual staff review system
- annual programme reports - the programme leader summarises the results and findings from all the various systems into an annual report, which is reviewed by the school quality committee and then goes to the school board
- mentoring of new staff/PG Programme in Learning and Teaching/probationary periods
- training of PhD students who have teaching responsibilities
- external mechanisms - the self-evaluation document allows for reflection and evaluation in preparation for subject review
With questionnaires, there is a good response in year 1, but this becomes patchy in years 2 and 3. Try to offer an opportunity for the questionniare can be filled in by a captive audience. The questionniare should contain a sufficient variety of questions to avoid fatigue. The main areas to cover are quality of teaching, clarity and communication, organisation/preparation, interactive/helpful, enthusiasm/stimulating, sensitivity to workload, fairness of assessment, knowledge of subject. If there are too many questions students get bored with filling it in. Allow for qualitative comments. Questions should be unambiguious, answerable on a numerical scale, in student-friendly language. Assess only one element per question, assess what students can answer, assess what staff can control - there is no point in asking questions that can't result in action. Assess where improvements can be made.
The timing of questionnaires generally means that any feedback may mainly influences the module for the next cohort, rather than the current one. As a result students don't necessarily see the results of their comments, which can be demotivating. Why give feedback if nothing results from it? Students are more likely to give reliable feedback if they are aware that it is taken seriously and they are informed of what happens to it. This can be achieved by ensuring that students see the loops are closed. Inform them of action taken, make sure they know how the systems work - some issues can be dealt with very quickly, others can't. Some issues are not in the control of the course teams.
There is a need to ensure that student representatives are adequately supported on liaison committees. Student representatives need to represent the whole student community in terms of race, gender, age, disability etc. How can this be ensured whilst avoiding tokenism or social engineering? How important is it for senior management teams to be directly involved with and answerable to students as part of the feedback process? How far are students able to contribute to generating the solutions to some of the problems or issues they raise? Is there an assumption that student feedback is about problems and staff response is to provide solutions? How far do student expectations have to be managed? Do they always know what they need? Do they understand fully the resourcing issues faced by universities?
Paper trails are becoming increasingly important, however can be problematic, in that less formal types of feedback and resulting action can't always be documented, and it is difficult to provide evidence that the action actually enhances the learning experience or improve teaching quality. How do you know if student feedback has enhanced your programme?
Staff are stakeholders in student feedback systems, in that it is often their teaching which is being reflected upon. It is important to establish and maintain a culture of trust in the systems used. How does this link with the issue of visibility? Where should lines be drawn? Feedback should always be constructive and blame cultures avoided.
Research on good practice in student feedback
A Loughborough University Business School research project on student feedback systems surveyed practice in a number of universities, drawing together a number of common elements of good practice:
- balance between central support and academic autonomy
- range of methods
- technological solutions
- staff ownership
- closing the loop
The UKCLE guide to learning about law lecturing includes sample questionnaires and pro formas for obtaining student feedback.
