Responding to student feedback - Letting students know that we value their feedback
It’s important to let students know that we value their feedback and that we consider it when planning our teaching. This website provides some examples of how you can respond to student feedback and outlines a simple way of communicating your response to the students who gave the feedback.
1. Collect student feedback.
This can be done in various ways. See our Surveys website for strategies.2. Reflect on the student feedback
Also on your own impressions, feedback from colleagues, the goals of the unit and the student learning outcomes in order to compose a response to students. Some examples of responses to students are below. Your response can also be used when reporting within the faculty and a revised version could be used in your Unit of Study Outline, in the section on Student feedback and evaluation.3. Communicate your response to your students.
An easy way is to email students using the University of Sydney online timetable all-student email service:- Go to http://web.timetable.usyd.edu.au
- Enter the unit of study code and the required semester
- Click on the link 'email all enrolled students' (see screen shot)
- Compose a message to students. A copy will be sent to your university email account.
Here are some examples of how you can respond to student feedback
School of Information Technologies
As well as summarising student and tutor feedback, the School of Information Technology example discusses the students’ learning outcomes. The summary of student performance on the final exam is particularly valuable, as it’s an assessment on which students rarely receive feedback. Taken together, these sources of information provide a holistic picture of what occurred in the unit and what changes will be made as a result. Go to example.Faculty of Education and Social Work
The Education and Social Work example considers students’ feedback on a particular unit of study with an emphasis on the students’ comments. The unit coordinator leaves the option open for students to contact him and in fact received several emails from students thanking him for considering their feedback e.g. It’s nice to see that our feedback has actually been considered and that there has been some re-structuring for the subject as result. Go to example.History Department
The example from the History department reports the number of students who responded to the evaluation and provides the unit coordinator’s responses to the summaries of student comments. Go to example.Faculty of Economics and Business
The Faculty of Economics and Business has a webpage on making use of student feedback. It includes ideas on possible changes you may wish to make in response to specific items on the Unit of Study Evaluation. Go to example.For further information
Please contact Dr Amani Bell. This is a new initiative and I welcome your questions, comments and feedback.
