student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Student Feedback & LeadershipIn addition, the PVC (Student Services) area undertakes periodic surveysof students on institution-wide issues and does establish programs in responseto student feedback, but there is no formal linkage between these surveysand the CES.RMIT University has performed well on some student outcomes indicators forthe Learning and Teaching Performance fund such as graduate employment.However, it has not performed well on student outcomes indicators for goodteaching, generic skills and overall satisfaction, based on the CEQ.Performanceon these scales has improved marginally within RMIT but has not improvedin past years in relation to other universities (DEST 2000-2007)This intersection of the need for the university to improve student feedbackand to provide greater clarity on the leadership and responsibility of staffinvolved across the university set the purpose for this project.1.3 ContextThe Project proposal identified that giving and receiving student feedbackis an essential element of the learning and teaching process. DEST hasrecognised the importance of student feedback for the quality of learningthrough investment in strategies to collect and analyse student feedbackdata in the course experience, postgraduate research and student satisfactionin Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). According to Stevens (2005 p87)‘managing student feedback and managing the actions taken in responseto this feedback are the most important areas for assuring quality in learningand teaching’. This currently is badly managed at RMIT.The effective use of student feedback is uneven. There is a lack of documentedevidence demonstrating how the challenges of using feedback are beingmet in different organisational units in universities and there is little evidencethat current ways of using student feedback are making any contributionto improving the overall quality of learning and teaching (Kember, Leungand Kwan, 2002).Given that the challenges and opportunities identified above for more effectiveuse of student feedback are not unique to RMIT University, the outcomesof the project are considered to be of value to other educational institutions.A sustainable approach to building leadership and the effective use of studentfeedback that may be scaled up or adapted to different contexts is of nationalsignificance and can contribute to improvements in the quality of learning andteaching. Other universities will be interested in improving good teachingindices to enhance their teaching performance. An example of this interestis the substantial work that has been done by a consortium of universitiesto code and use qualitative comments from CEQ, (DEST Evaluation andInvestigation Project, 2005). Advancement in these areas of practice willresult in improvement in the quality of teaching practice, the qualityof programs and student learning outcomes and experiences.Page 16