Gathering and Presenting Feedback

Transcription

1 Gathering and Presenting Feedback This training session was aimed at developing your skills in gathering feedback from students and presenting them to staff during any meetings. These skills are essential to your role as a course rep, but we are not expecting you to have them all first time round on the job - this is why we give you the appropriate training to get you started. It's great that you have taken you first step and volunteered to be that link between staff and students, now it's time to learn some new skills and put them into action!

2 What methods could be used for gathering data? These were the most popular ideas for gathering student feedback which were suggested to us by Student reps. Each of these methods come with their own pros and cons, so it is often a good idea to make use of them all at some point during the year. Some are suited to certain types of courses than others, but it is down to each individual rep as to which they make use of. Questionnaires/Surveys Quick to distribute. Reach a lot of students Quick to create Great way of gathering mass feedback May be a good option to reach students who may be shy about approaching their student rep May not get a large response, and it would be difficult to chase everyone up to get their surveys back. Questions can be subjective Respondents may put the answers they think you would expect as opposed to their true opinions. Hard to obtain in depth, detailed answers without a number of open questions. May not be fully representative Face to face discussions Get direct answers, which is effective in understanding full details of an issue. Can ask for suggestions or ideas for any improvements in person. Good way to meet more people and spread the word about the work you are doing as student rep. This method may not appeal to all students, such as those who are more shy or introvert. Hard to reach students in different groups or with different timetables to you. Time consuming. Students may feel pressured into talking about issues or feel like they are being led to give a certain answer - need to be careful about this. Easy for all students to access through home or University computers. Quick to do and can be done throughout the year in their own time. Easy to make your contact details available for everyone to access. Can have discussion online and get similar amount of details as if you were meeting face to face.

3 Great method of communication for those on part time courses or distance learning courses. Misunderstandings may occur through online discussions. Social Media Twitter and Facebook are great tools to use if used correctly. Most students have access to a form of social media. Quick and easy way to gather feedback. Students may see this as an easier method compared to , as they may be using social media more often than their academic address. Students can share thoughts and have discussions with each other about their course - what works well, and what doesn't work so well. Great tool to use to arrange social get-togethers to increase group interaction. Have to be careful that it doesn't turn into a "rant" space, which could easily get out of control. Post it notes Quick method of gathering feedback. Anonymous form of gathering feedback, therefore students may feel they can express their opinions more freely. Cheap to purchase. Easy to pass around in a lecture or seminar to reach as many students as possible. May not be specific - you may get a lot of unnecessary details or issues. Some feedback may be too vague to take forward. Anonymous, so will not be able to discuss issues further with students. Time consuming to do the data analysis. Ballot Boxes Fun for students to use. A solid way to gather feedback throughout the year if students know where this is situated. Time consuming to set up and maintain. Data analysis is time consuming

4 Good and Bad Feedback. In this activity, we discussed what makes good and bad feedback. This could apply to the feedback you receive from students as well as how you present this feedback to staff. Remember, not all students will be aware of these points when giving you their feedback - it may be up to you to alter the way you deliver the feedback to suit the situation you are in or who you are sharing the information with. Good Feedback Constructive - not only telling you what you what is wrong, but also offering a suggestion as to how it could be improved. Representative - Feedback you present to staff should be as representative as possible. If it's not, it's still useful - however please remember to mention if it's a comment by one or two students. Specific - Although a general overview of an issue is important to set the scene to an issue, you may be asked about more specific details. Therefore, it is important to remember to ask students questions about any issues they bring up so that you are able to feed this back to staff. This also ensures that the problem is dealt with as well as possible. Positive and Negative feedback - It's helpful to remind students that feedback doesn't all need to be negative. Positive feedback is encouraged and also appreciated by University staff. If students particularly like something about their course, make sure they feed this back to you so the University staff are aware that it's going well and know to carry it on in future.

5 What makes a good survey? As with any feedback mechanism, the use of surveys have both got positive and negative points. They are a great way of gathering feedback from a large number of students or participants; however each question can be quite subjective to the individual who completes it. This means that they may interpret the questions differently to what you intended, and their response may not reflect what you were trying to find out or be the same as how others interpreted it. This brings into question the validity and reliability of the results. Fortunately, this is something you may be able to tackle with some consideration into how you phrase your questions, and having a balance of different questions to ga The following are some examples of questions which you could use for a survey, with the positives and negatives of using each one. Scale Scale question The response options for this question have been input into a 5 point scale. Pros: This gives the participant more options when answering the question as opposed to a simple "yes/no" multiple choice question.

6 Cons: Participants could be lazy and click the middle "Neither agree nor disagree" for all of the questions. The more response options there are, the longer the analysis will take. The options are still subjective Closed questions allow respondents to select from a predetermined set of answers. These can include yes/no, true/false, ranking and multiple choice questions. Multiple Choice Questions These are "closed questions" which means that the participant must choose one of them and there often is not an option to add more details or your opinions in answer to the question. Pros: Easy and quick to gather quantitative data, which you can use to create graphs and charts. Quick to complete, and requires less effort on the part of the participant so you are more likely to get a higher quantity of results. Good type of questions for set options, such as demographics. Can add an "Other" option if required for more information. Cons: Cannot obtain a lot of detail from this type of question. Questions can be considered "leading" or "suggestive".

7 There will always be a limit to the number of options you can have in a question like this, and so you are thereby limiting how much your participants can express their true opinions. Open Question Comment Box Pros: Unrestricted, free response of opinions. Allow respondents to expand on their answers in more detail. Cons: Can take a lot of time and effort to analyse the results. May yield a lot of unnecessary information. Requires a lot of effort by respondents to complete if there are a lot of open questions in the survey.

8 Visual Results Quantitative Results You could present the feedback you recieved in graphs or charts, which you can use as visual aids when talking through your feedback results. Qualitative Results Qualitative data is harder to present in visual form to a group at your meeting. The best way of doing this may be to pick out any main points or themes you come across and present these findings instead. You could use some full answers as examples to back these themes up.