The ITL's Unit of Study Questionnaire
Please choose your faculty from the drop down menu below and press 'Go' to view your faculty's Unit of Study Questionnaire (pdf format)
The USE student feedback data is gathered by means of a short 8 to 12 item questionnaire.
There are 8 standard items and 4 faculty designated items. Each faculty has the opportunity to include up to 4 items that are particularly relevant to their evaluation needs. Faculties discuss and decide these items and the ITL then adds these to the core items before the survey forms are printed for use by staff in that faculty. In this way there is potential for each faculty to have their own 'standard' survey. The faculty-designated items might be set for between 2 and 6 semesters (ie a up to the full three years of the evaluation cycle).
Faculties can choose to develop and use their own survey form; however the ITL does not provide data entry, analysis and reporting for non-ITL surveys.
The questionnaire elicits both a numerical rating and the student's comments
explaining their rating, for each item. This combination of quantitative
and qualitative data for each item allows unit of study coordinators to
gain an insight into why students consider particular aspects of
the teaching and learning process to be effective, as well as identifying
overall strengths and weaknesses from the students' perspective.
The survey was developed in relation to the Academic Board Resolution on
the Evaluation and Management of Teaching. The 8 core items take account
of:
- Current student learning research literature
- University policy regarding Units of Study
- University Quality Assurance Processes
The questions relate to each of the factor scales of the University's 'Student Course Experience Questionnaire' (SCEQ), which in turn is based upon the Australia wide DEST survey, the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). The items on the national survey, the university survey and the USE survey are all 'student centred' and focus on the individual students' actual experience of teaching and learning. Because of the shared student focus of the three surveys, and the direct correspondence of USE items with the SCEQ and CEQ factor scales, improvements to issues identified by the USE items should be reflected in improvements on the related SCEQ factor scale scores, and ultimately in the university's performance on the national CEQ.
The relationship of the USE survey items to both the SCEQ factor scales and to the key elements of the academic board resolution on the Management and Evaluation of Teaching is described in table 1.
