Students

Mid-course feedback

Mid-course feedback is one of the ways that students can provide course feedback. It provides an opportunity to feed back during a course on what is going well, any issues, and to receive a response to feedback while the course is still running.

In line with the Student Voice Policy, feedback should be given and received in accordance with the University’s Dignity and Respect Policy.  Students should be aware of the potential for unconscious bias when providing feedback.  Information on equality, diversity and unconscious bias

Examples

The examples provided below are from before the Covid-19 pandemic when the most popular methods for gathering mid-course feedback were postcards and other paper-based approaches.  Staff will now also be using a variety of ways to gather and respond to mid-course feedback, from Learn to online surveys and interactive tools such as TopHat or Mentimeter.

Example – Financial Services Marketing course (Business School)

The Course Organiser, helped by the class representative, used coloured post-it notes to gather feedback from students on the course.  Different colours of post-it notes were used for students to indicate what they felt should stop, start, or continue and any other comments. The Course Organiser explained the process and then left the room to give students time to fill in the post-it notes anonymously. The class representative then got the students to stick the completed post-it notes on the wall in coloured groups. The Course Organiser came back into the room, looked at the comments and immediately gave brief responses to the students on their feedback. This was followed up afterwards with a detailed response to students written by the Course Organiser. The feedback from students on the course was overwhelmingly positive. The few issues raised were not significant and many were addressed before the next lecture. Where changes were not able to be made, the students were content to know the reasons for this.

Example - Using Top Hat (Vet School)

The video explains how the lecturer used Top Hat to get real time feedback from students.

Valuing mid-course feedback

A language assistant in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, contributes to the Enhancement Themes work that the University was engaged in to close the gap between student and staff perceptions of feedback.

 Student feedback: The key to course improvement