Using Student Feedback to Optimize Learning – Four Emerging Trends

Student feedback is invaluable. It’s often referred to as one of the leading influences on learning and achievement. Recognizing feedback as such a powerful tool, higher education institutions are finding different ways to maximize the rewards that it offers. Let’s take a look at four trends that are shaping how student feedback is used to optimize learning.

1. Expanding uses and users of student feedback

   Instructors were initially the sole users of student feedback. Over the years, this feedback has proven to be useful to other parties. Research by The Open University found that university program teams are using student feedback to ensure that learning objectives are being met. Departments and faculties are using results to satisfy quality and standards responsibilities, and institutions are using feedback to formulate a strategy for the future. All uses of student feedback ultimately seek to optimize the learning experience and to prepare students for success following their education.

2. Tools to separate affective reactions from productive reactions

   While there are now many users of student feedback, the results are most sensitive to instructors. Receiving negative feedback can be difficult. That’s why some instructors have started using tools to separate affective reactions from productive responses. For example, the University of Oregon provides faculty members with a guideline entitled ‘Responding to Course Feedback from Students’. The guideline encourages instructors to answer both “how do you feel about the comment?” and “how could you use the comment?” to ensure that a productive response is made. It’s no doubt that instructors can more easily improve their teaching effectiveness when they separate affective from productive reactions.

3. Feedback becoming an everyday process

   Faced with increased competition from giant corporations, higher education institutions are always looking for ways to improve and optimize the learning experience for students. Universities and colleges have started to make feedback an everyday process in order to improve teaching effectiveness. As educator and author Jan Chappuis states, “Effective feedback occurs during the learning, while there is still time to act on it”. By collecting daily feedback, instructors are able to better grasp students’ expectations and cater to their specific needs.

4. Publishing results

   Some universities, including seven of the eight Ivy League schools, have started to publish student feedback online. An article by John Colley, director of MBA and executive programs at Nottingham University Business School, argues that “teachers will be motivated to improve if internal assessments are made public”. He states that “universities are actively attempting to improve their teaching as they seek to attract students” and publishing student evaluations of teaching is one way to do so.