A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Feedback plays a vital role in the experience of students in higher education yet students often report that feedback is unsatisfactory. Concomitantly lecturers routinely devote substantial time and effort into it. This HEA funded project aimed to explore and understand students’ own feedback objectives and to develop a process of aligning the perspectives of students and lecturers. A longitudinal mixed-method approach was used and students’ experiences of feedback over time were gathered through a systematic series of peer-led focus groups and an online survey among undergraduate psychology students. Data collection occurred in two phases; the first phase collected students’ perspectives of the university feedback system and the results were fed back internally in order to inform the implementation of a new departmental feedback system for the subsequent semester. The second phase of data collection collected students’ views and satisfaction with the newly implemented feedback system. Findings from both phases of the data collection are presented identifying a number of perceived problems with feedback systems along with common misunderstandings between students and lecturers about the purpose of feedback and how to engage with it.
