Collecting and using student feedback Date: a guide to good practice

Abstract

The purpose of this Guide is to help higher education institutions make the best use of their student feedback. This guide is based on a HEFCE funded project undertaken by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI). The purpose of this Guide is to help higher education institutions make the best use of their student feedback. All institutions collect feedback from their students and in many different forms. They use it to improve the quality of the education they provide. In recent years, there has been a shift in the balance between informal and formal types of student feedback with a greater emphasis on the latter. Now, new devolved forms of national quality assurance promise to give an important role to students and there is also an expectation that information from student feedback will be used to inform the choices of students when applying to higher education. Thus, as the importance attached to student feedback increases, ensuring that feedback is collected effectively and used wisely becomes an increasing priority for higher education institutions. This Guide draws on the experiences of the sector to highlight some of the good practices that exist as well as some of the problems that institutions are experiencing in using student feedback. Its focus is upon the use of student feedback for the purpose of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. Other purposes are acknowledged but are not the main emphasis of this publication