A paper from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Student feedback is an important source to address the students’ issues/requirements. However it is still not clear how useful module evaluation feedback is in enhancing teaching at the individual module level as a part of the student centred teaching approach (SCTA). This pilot study aimed to investigate whether feedback questionnaires can be used to improve module delivery in subjects allied to medicine. It also looked at (a) the efficiency of the Likert scale questionnaire and (b) the validity and usefulness of open-ended questions in identifying the issues for improvement. Subsequently the effectiveness of these improvements was assessed by a follow-up survey. The study included two NQF level 5 and one level 6 modules within the subjects allied to medicine cohorts of 2012/13 and 2013/2014. The online qualitative analytical software Wordle© was used to semi-quantify and compare the positive and negative student comments.
The data from this study has indicated that students are efficient in raising genuine/ important issues. However the Likert scale questions were found to give misleading data on student satisfaction. In contrast student comments were found to be very useful in helping the module team to improve delivery. Most interestingly the follow-up survey has shown module delivery/assessment changes made as a result of student feedback have mostly enhanced student learning experience. Overall the data suggest that student feedback provides rational and important information to enhance module delivery. This paper shares the experiences the lessons learnt from this feedback and the key strategies used to continuously improve module delivery.
