Leveraging Student Feedback

Student Feedback is an essential part of the learning and teaching process, but difficulties can exist when it comes to acting on this feedback in a way that enhances our students learning and our teaching. One of these difficulties is related to what we as faculty do with the data collected at the end of each teaching period.

At ACOM, this feedback was often hastily read but not acted upon as our attention always turned quickly to the next trimester ahead rather than one just finished. This paper will outline the process that ACOM developed to improve our appraisal and action on all student feedback. This took place in three phases:

Phase One: a designated faculty member became responsible for reading feedback across all disciplines but reported only negative feedback and related issues that required attention to the Academic Board.

Phase Two: reporting widened to include all positive and negative feedback and specialised areas of concern including, technical aspects of the online learning system and wider student support issues.

…difficulties can exist when it comes to acting on feedback in a way that enhances our students learning and our teaching. One of these difficulties is related to what we as faculty do with the data collected

Phase Three: Ongoing reporting was supplemented with a Rolling Feedback Action Log. This log records actions that need to be taken, the faculty or staff member assigned to that task, and the status of that task (i.e., pending or completed). The Action Log is maintained by a designated faculty member and tabled at each Academic Board meeting for continual review.

By implementing this feedback process, the rich and regular data that students provide is not only captured and evaluated but, more importantly, a process is in place that ensures it is either acted upon immediately or noted and available for use during unit review/rewrite in the future. This ensures we can leverage this feedback for the maximum benefits of our students learning.