Students -> Please help me, quick survey.

NutterzUK

NutterzUK

NutterzUK

Associate
Joined
18 Feb 2010
Posts
940
Hi,

If you are currently a student or recently graduated, I would really appreciate some help.

I am part of a group doing research into what makes good feedback for coursework. The group is developing a new assessment framework and we really want to try to make sure that the feedback it produces is in line with what students want.

We would really (really really!) appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill in a quick survey, all of the questions are fairly straight forwards and it is totally anonymous (Unless you choose to add your email which you don't have to do).

Here is a link:
Survey Monkey link


Thanks,
Steve
 
pitchfork said:
And what exactly do I get from it? You want my data, compensate me for it.
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You get to know that that if you are still a student, or have children who will become students that you have helped my research which may improve the quality of feedback that you/they will receive.

You get the nice warm feeling that you have helped.
 
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NutterzUK said:
You to know that that if you are still a student, or have children who will become students that you have helped my research which may improve the quality of feedback that you/they will receive.

You get the nice warm feeling that you have helped.
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Question 2, what makes you think professors will listen?

I mean lets hear about your doctorates, what qualifies you to tell them how to do their job?
 
pitchfork said:
Question 2, what makes you think professors will listen?
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Giving useful feedback to students is an entirely separate skill from achieving one's own academic progress. Smart people are usually keen to learn how they could improve themselves (assuming that proper groundwork underpins the advice!) Plus, universities have a duty to teach their students, and will often impose requirements upon academics to teach and feedback in a certain way - whether they're interested or not.

All that said, it's certainly not clear if NutterzUK believes that an internet survey advertised on public online forums is a valuable source of data to improve student feedback? I certainly hope it's not the only source! ;)
 
pitchfork said:
Question 2, what makes you think professors will listen?

I mean lets hear about your doctorates, what qualifies you to tell them how to do their job?
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Thanks for the questions. There are two answers to this really, i'm not sure which is the one you are after.
1) There is also a survey for staff, this is part of 2 surveys. It is also not in any way going to lead to "telling staff how to do their job", it is only seeking to find exactly what students want in their feedback, how they want to receive it, and how they may use it to improve. We are also looking for differences in attitudes about feedback between staff and students. Do staff consider feedback as a method to justify the grade given, or are they giving feedback really considering how students will use it to improve? However, of course this is in the staff survey which will be circulated internally.
2) This is part of a larger semi-automated marking system. The system needs to be able to produce feedback which meets student's expectations and helps them rather than hinders. It is not part of creating some guide to shove in the face of staff, it is actually part of creating a system which will aid in assessment, both for feedback and the consistency of grades. Initial results from the semi automated marking framework which is being developed have been extremely promising, in terms of:
- Time taken to mark work (aiding the markers)
- The consistency of marks (as measured by the difference in average mark given by individually markers).
- The number of complaints received from students about grades.

However, we felt that although the grades are considered to be rather consistent at the moment for the particular types of work it is marking, one of the main criticisms of similar systems (including the one which I am working on) is the feedback. Often saying what was done right and what was done wrong is not enough, but what exactly is expected? This is what the survey is starting to look at, and if there are areas which are regularly highlighted, the aim is to make sure that we consider them going forwards.

So I suppose that gives a little more background on it. My PhD research is in automated marking systems, this is a part of it. Why will professors listen? Ultimately the aim is to help them, as well as students and their views are taken into account too. I have marked hundreds of assignments, I know the pain of it, believe me.
 
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AJK said:
All that said, it's certainly not clear if NutterzUK believes that an internet survey advertised on public online forums is a valuable source of data to improve student feedback? I certainly hope it's not the only source! ;)
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It's not the only source :). We have so much data that I am drowning in it, just we wanted to collect views from other universities and disciplines other than my own, in particular to find differences between them.
Consider, for example, do students in social sciences expect feedback to be different to what students in pure sciences expect? This would be interesting to find out.
 
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NutterzUK said:
Consider, for example, do students in social sciences expect feedback to be different to what students in pure sciences? This would be interesting to find out.
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From experience they certainly do, though I can only report that anecdotally having not conducted any studies myself. Should be an interesting project, all the best for it! (My graduation isn't particularly "recent" so won't pollute the data by filling it in!)
 
AJK said:
From experience they certainly do, though I can only report that anecdotally having not conducted any studies myself. Should be an interesting project, all the best for it! (My graduation isn't particularly "recent" so won't pollute the data by filling it in!)
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Thanks AJK, I really appreciate your comments. I will make sure to come back and give some summarised results of what we find as soon as we have analysed results and written up etc.
 
That's a weird set of discipline categories. Law is a humanity, not an applied science, and I'm moderately offended to see agriculture and engineering grouped together.

Still, answered. I hadn't realised until today just how little importance I put on feedback beyond the grade.
 
JonJ678 said:
That's a weird set of discipline categories. Law is a humanity, not an applied science, and I'm moderately offended to see agriculture and engineering grouped together.

Still, answered. I hadn't realised until today just how little importance I put on feedback beyond the grade.
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Sorry for any offense because of the groupings. Thanks for answering though :). That's going to be really helpful. We ran a pilot study to check the questions were "OK" before sending out to the masses, and that's something we actually picked up on, a lot of students ignore the feedback. I think I did too, unless it was a particularly bad piece of work or the grade was bad.
 
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