Assessment Feedback

On Friday 29th May, the Times Higher wrote an article called “Academics ‘distressed’ by anonymous student feedback”. This refers to a feedback campaign run by the Students’ Union.
The Campaign was simple; we asked students to score lecturers on their feedback on a scale between 1 – 10, the Students’ Union delivered the postcard with the score on it to the lecturer. The lecturer did not know why they had received the score they did or how to improve the score without feedback. Just the issue some students face!

There was wide support for the campaign from a number of University staff and, most importantly, a large number of students. The idea of the campaign was run past the Deputy Vice Chancellor Dr Peter Marsh, who did not express any concerns.

The campaign intended to:
I. highlight the problem the University of Bolton currently has with assessment feedback,
II. get University staff discussing the issue,
III. convince the University that the way in which assessment feedback is done institutionally needs to be changed, as does the attitudes of some staff members towards assessment feedback.
I regret to hear that some members of University staff were distressed by this approach; however it is important to approach this from a student perspective. With each student paying upwards of £3k to attend the University, should the headline perhaps have read “Students outraged by the lack of assessment feedback”.

In my role as UBSU President I have to ensure that students’ views are heard. I have felt that for too long the issue of assessment feedback at the University of Bolton has not been dealt with and needed to be addressed.

The Times Higher Education original article can be found at:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406775&c=2

Mark Higgins
University of Bolton Students’ Union President