Closing the Loop

[Print-friendly version]

Communicating with students about evaluation data

Closing the feedback loop is about showing students that they were heard; that their feedback is valued and has been acted upon. Communicating with students in this way reinforces that they are part of a learning community in which teachers and students work together to create a quality learning environment. It is an important teaching practice that helps build ownership, understanding, collegiality and shared responsibility for learning in your cohort. Most students don't expect you to be perfect and will respond well to a positive and proactive approach to problem solving that emphasises how everyone needs to work together to achieve successful outcomes.
When constructing your response to student feedback, remember that the LEX is not considered the only source of data about your students’ experience. Reflect on other feedback you may have collected through one-minute papers, customised surveys, student consultations or teaching team discussions. From these experiences, choose the top 1-3 issues you feel are most important to discuss with your students. These issues may be positive aspects of your unit and teaching that you will continue or negative aspects for which you have developed improvement strategies or expectation management strategies. The LEX resources provide further help for developing improvement strategies for your unit and teaching.

TOP TIPS for constructing online feedback

1. Be specific

Last semester some students said they didn't find the unit resources helpful to learning.

2. Express appreciation:

The Teaching Team appreciates this feedback.

3. Express your new ideas about teaching:

This semester reading guides have been added to help you make the connection between the resources and the assignment tasks.

4. Use the feedback opportunity to promote your teaching and learning goals:

In this unit it's important that you do extra reading to increase your understanding of the lecture topics.

5. Encourage further feedback:

The Teaching Team looks forward to hearing how the reading guides help you make the best use of your study time.

Another Example

Last semester some students said that they didn’t understand the relevance of the unit activities. The teaching team appreciates this feedback. This semester, a guest speaker has been invited to Lecture 3 and Lecture 5 to discuss how elements of the unit relate to the workplace. It’s important you attend these lectures as they provide essential background to the assessment tasks. The teaching team looks forward to hearing how these real world examples help you understand the unit activities.

The Evaluation Resources Blackboard Community Site

Further resources to assist staff in following up on their LEX results and closing the loop on evaluations with students are available on the Evaluation Resources Blackboard Community Site. To join the site, enter your Blackboard portal, click on the Community Tab and search for Evaluation Resources. Select that community and then click the enrol button which is located at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.