Academics ‘distressed’ by anonymous student feedback

How terrible that poor performing academics should finally be held to account. Students pay over £3000 a year for minimal contact time, bad feedback and shoddy lectures - when did academics decide that higher education was not about the students??? I commend the action of the SU in Bolton and support students in their plight for a good, fair, value for money education.

I couldn't agree more with "Anonymous"

And how ironic that both of the above posters chose to remain anonymous

Well done Paul P, well done....

Strangely enough, I ask my students to do just this. It hadn't occurred to me that I should get "extremely distressed" by their opinions.

If they say something inappropriate and offensive, just ignore it. If they say something criminal, report it. If they say something legitimate and with good reason that upsets you, either change the way you do your job or change career.

This is a mean-spirited and thoughtless action by the University of Bolton's students' union. This exercise is obviously intended to prompt schools into putting into place systematic mechanisms for getting lecturers to give students informative feedback on their work in a timely fashion, but this is not the right way of going about it. By directing the protest at individual lecturers instead of departmental assessment systems the students' union is openly inviting and giving its endorsement to students to engage in spiteful and vindictive treatment of individuals, which is irrelevant to the purpose of the campaign. Concerning the question of students giving lectuters feedback on their courses and tuition, lecturers should be seeking students' feedback as a matter of course and it should be standardised within if not between departments. On a differently mean-spirited note, I would like to say I'm grateful for this article, without which I might never have known there was such a thing as a University of Bolton.

It is interesting that everyone is assuming a negative outcome will emerge from this. Does this mean that lecturers think the majority of students are malicious or that you lack confidence in your own abilities?

@Intrigued: it could be be that students who are satisfied with their courses are less likely to give feedback than students who feel aggravated about something. This kind of self-selection does indeed skew results. I myself find that I'm much more likely to complain about something I didn't like, rather than give good feedback when I was happy with something (though I'm trying hard to change this habit). 'Forced' feedback is also not ideal, but getting all students to fill in a feedback form (eg at the last session of a seminar) at least makes sure there is no sampling bias.

It's probably worth noting that the students do not supply any comments of any kind on the forms, merely a score, rating their lecturer on a scale of 1-10. Have a look at the Bolton SU website where the purpose of the campaign is explained: http://ubsupresident.blogspot.com/2009/02/feedback.html I'd say the SU has made it's point quite well. The part that concerns me most is that UCU seem to believe that, "This is anonymous bullying and victimisation with no right of reply." Using this definition surely implies that marking examinations could also be considered to be a form of bullying and victimisation? The gulf between UCU and reality appears to be widening rapidly.

Shut it down.

Crysanthemum thank you for the link it shows how poorly researched the article is. The SU is making a point about the lack of comments, so why does the UCU think this will cause students to make comments? I assume that this is simply some UCU official simply making a statement about something with none of the facts. I can't imagine that too many staff would do much if they recieved a few postcards with a number on them, even if they all gave a score of 1/10.

I agree with your point in principle: it isn't right that students pay high fees for shoddy lectures and minimal contact time. But I fear your ire is targetted in the wrong direction. It's not the academics who want to restrict student contact time, or who don't want to give feedback. Rather the system is constructed in such a way as to restrict what they are able to do. If tutors are paid for marking assignments, they might typically be paid on the assumption that they mark 3 (e.g. 3 coursework essays) an hour. 20 minutes reading / marking time for the piece of work (2000 words long?) that the student might have spent weeks working on? No teacher in higher education wants to work like this, but it's the way the system is. Blame the management. And the government.

Oliver is right to suggest students/people are more likely to complain than compliment- that's human nature. The number/score based feedback is never going to be truly accurate in reflecting a lecturer's skill, or lack of, in leading a class. If we marked everyone out of 10 it would become clear how fallacious it is to reduced people's work to a number. Imagine if we could score management, Deans, Vice-chancellors out of 10. Their work, our work, is too broad to reduce to a number; if I give a low mark does that make me a bad tutor? no,probably not, not every student will do well - but the student who gets the bad mark may feel they didn't 'get' what they were supposed to from the class and that this is the tutor's fault. It rarely is.

Paid on the assumption of 20 minutes per essay, lol, you would be amazed (and appalled) at what some management systems actually factor in.

Paid on the assumption of 20 minutes per essay, lol, you would be amazed (and appalled) at what some management systems actually factor in.

Double post I know but different point. Shoddy x, y and z will never be dealt with via anonymous feedback to the person who is shoddy. If they are so insensitive to realise they are causing a class problems they are hardly going to change on an anonymous comment.

I teach in the US. Student evaluations are very common there, to the extent that in many universities the decision whether you can stay employed (tenure) is based on these evaluations. In essence, student evaluations should not be negative and could be encouraging. However, there are some very serious side-effects to it. Many junior colleagues instead of teaching as they believe, start teaching with the intent to receive good evaluations. This often leads to grade inflation, as students often like to believe they are brilliant and deserve an A, even if in reality they aren't exactly rocket scientists. It is worse than just that. Female colleagues have received sexually explicit (obviously anonymous) evaluations, that can be literally traumatizing as comments may spell out physical problems or defects. A colleague who had had cancer surgery that had damaged a facial nerve that affected the corner of his mouth was suggested he should apply to play the role of the Joker in Batman. Ethnic minority faculty members have received evaluations with racial innuendos. Overall we also see students deviating from limiting themselves to what they could potentially be knowledgeable about, and adopt and attitude as if they were peers. They will comment on whether a faculty member is knowledgeable about their area or not (which often, unless the faculty member is noticeably dim or brilliant, they would not be in a position to judge), or on whether an undergraduate course is taught too much as a graduate course or not (note that they have never attended a graduate class and in fact just graduated from high school ... so where do they get this knowledge). In conclusion, student evaluations theoretically can be a positive thing, but practically often turn into badmouthing and retaliation. While I leave it up to judgment of others whether student evaluations should be carried out or not, I would strongly urge you to fight using and certainly predominantly relying on student evaluations as a basis for tenure, job security or promotion. Do not forget, that the answers or scores on evaluations are one thing, but how your peers will explain the reason and meaning of those scores is something entirely different. Depending on how they like or dislike you, your scores will be used and back up with ad hominem statements to make a case against or in favour of you.

I work as a lecturer in a university and anonymous feedback from students is part and parcel of the work-it feeds into promotions. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is not so good- the point is not to take it too personally, sometimes students prefer a mode of teaching that is different to the way the lecturer thinks is best. I have in the past recieved my best and worst ever evaluation scores in the same semester-what does that mean? That I am great or terrible? The difference was in the audience-judging it is hard sometimes- the same lecturer using the same style can get different evaluations from one year to the next. My real gripe is that the feedback is so vague- if students have some problem grasping some ideas or think some topics need to be covered more fully they say so right enough but they do not say which ideas or which topics- its hard to take vague feedback seriously- students need to think about what they expect as much as lecturers need to think about how to present the courses. Unfortunately, speaking to colleagues leads me to think that dumbing down occurs as a consequence of too much emphasis on anonymous feedback- able students bored by easy less challenging material are generally percieved to be less likely to complain that less able students struggling to cope- a pity since I really think that to some degree this feedback does help raise standards.

I've always adopted the policy that feedback on courses provided by me should be anonymous. This way the student feels able to express themselves honestly without fear of reprisals. I can't believe UCU are waiting their time on this when they are extremely tight fisted on which claims for bullying and wrongful dismissal they will fight in court.

We get anonymous feedback via WebCt. I agree that feedback is generally vague. I also suspect that it tends to be the more diligent, high-achieving students that take the time to log-on to fill out the form. I know that many students develop feedback-form-filling-fatigue by the end of the semester, but I still think it's an essential process. I never really look at the numbers/statistical data so I encourage students to supply written comments. I think it's worth keeping in mind that feedback can provide guidance on what didn't work but can also support what does work (e.g. enthusiastic comments on longer seminars can be referred to in order to justify their existence to managers trying economise).

The great disadvantage of having an electronic feedback form is that it doesn't always work. The last time I was a student on a one year course at university my lecturers waxed lyrical about the benefits of their online feedback form, which we were expected to complete at 3 intervals over the duration of the course. The trouble is it only worked the first time. At the end of the spring and summer terms my whole class was herded into the computer suite only to find the link to the form was not working, so we couldn't give any feedback. You can't rely on electronic systems working on the precise hour, day or even week that feedback is requested; and lecturers need to realise it takes time and effort for students to find, retain and type in fiddly URLs, usernames and passwords, especially if they have to go back to the computer suite repeatedly to see if it's working. Always have copies of the feedback form available on paper as a back-up if you really want a reasonable volume of feedback. Of course, if you don't want the feedback in the first place, just make it as difficult as possible for the students to give, and then you can pretend everyone's happy with the course you're giving.

I suggest it would be useful to look at the text of the motion that was debated and passed before commentating on the Times Higher report of it. It is neither against student feedback nor hostile to student concerns. What is of concern is inappropriate and non-constructive, and non-negotiated (between student reps and staff) feedback mechanisms: HE37 Unacceptable student feedback - North West Region HE Committee - Conference notes the concern regarding evidence, particularly in North West Region, of unsolicited, inappropriate and often anonymous criticism by students of academic staff via text messages, social networking sites and pigeon-hole post-cards. Conference believes that this is a form of bullying which cannot be tolerated. Whilst conference supports and encourages legitimate student feedback, conference believes that this needs to arise from negotiated and agreed processes in order to be fair and effective. Conference resolves: to instruct HEC to liaise with NUS and other appropriate organisations with a view to ending this illegitimate and disparaging practice before it becomes an embedded norm to instruct HEC to publicise this practice to the wider membership and advise members to report institutions where this occurs to offer support to members who have suffered as a consequence.

We have a formal feedback process as part of our course. It's done via an online system that runs in a pop-up window, which is duly blocked by the university's own computers and prevented from running. I managed to get it working on my home PC (by disabling my pop-up blocker - thanks guys) but it kept crashing the PC to the point where I gave up. Ten out of ten for style, minus several million for good thinking. When the administrators sent a group email complaining that very few people had completed the feedback, I gave them the feedback that they needed to test their feedback system. I haven't had any feedback to date. As a postscript, the system (should it ever work) formally allows anonymous comments. Perhaps my organisation should be berated for enabling the bullying culture? Oh hang on though...

Apart from Bolton and MMU, other universities would be facing similar problems soon. It is rumoured that @ Bedfordshire in Year Two of a BA degree course for a few modules no feedback was given to the students' coursework for at least three months. David Owen was only one who returned the feedback on time. Some other lecturers are just teachers NOT LECTURERS. This is the univrsiry that gor 'LIMITED CONFIDENCE' from QAA. Shouldn't the senior manager (including Ebdon) be looking at things like this? What this Unversity has is a bunch of glorified secondary school teachers - no research, teach 25 hrs a week and then summer off and senior managers who don't care.

The few feedbacks or lack of it show how low some Universities have stooped. These Universities should be closed down or employ some REAL lecturers. These universities are Charlatans - they distribute low calibre degrees, which will not get the graduates jobs in decent establishments. The v-cs of these universities should be fired and these universities closed.

Accurate feedback on academics' performance is welcome. However, the problems with anonymous feedback are obvious: a) there is no way of verifying its foundation in truth - it may be purely malicious - and b) there is no right of reply. When I provide feedback to students, as an academic, I am obliged to provide my name, and I may well be called upon to justify my comments. The rationale for this accountability applies equally to students' feedback on academics. We should oppose anonymous feedback of any kind.

I've been involved in service teaching at a post-1992 institution in the north-east of England for a number of years now, and not a single year has gone by without colleagues in the "home" department actively encouraging students to complain about "low marks." This often takes the form of crude bullying by students, complete with threats of legal action if I don't adjust their marks upwards. Consistently favourable remarks from both my internal and external examiners are never taken into account, and the approved learning outcomes might as well not exist. All that ever matters is that "student expectations don't seem to have been met." Mercifully, I have the support of my own departmental colleagues, but this in no way mitigates the absurdity of the position adopted by colleagues at the "home" department, who never stop reminding me of how exceptionally brilliant their students are. In other words, the fact that these students are excellent theologians, for example, naturally makes them exceptional mathematicians! A colleague recently explained to me that this inane reasoning is informed by an unwritten policy called "standardization," which means that all subjects, regardless of their specialism, are deemed to have the same basic content. A historian, for example, should therefore be quite capable of teaching marketing because teaching is simply "a process" (whatever this ever meant) and has little to do with facilitating the acquisition of knowledge and critical thinking in a particular academic field. I hope to God that she was just being cynical; otherwise, I weep for the future of higher education in England.

I can only support the views of "Actually read the motion before criticising it"; so many of the comments made don't focus on the detail of the motion. However, now that the motion has been faithfully reproduced perhaps we'll get more appropriate comments.

Like I said, the Bolton Students' Union campaign which targets the pigeonholes of individual lecturers is not the way to go about raising the issue of inadequate feedback on student assignments. The students' union needs to enter into constructive dialogue with course leaders to tackle this problem systematically. That's the way to get a university-wide policy on feedback drawn up and implemented.

I'm surprised to learn that student feedback is used in many institutions as a basis for promotion. Yet, as some have already pointed out, they should know that it is the less able students that are more likely to provide feedback - usually as retaliation for low grades. In my experience, the able ones tend to prefer a personal , face-to-face 'thank you,' where they might, quite rightly and understandably, throw in a request for a reference. So, yes, let's have all the student feedback we can get, but no, our careers shouldn't depend on it. Then again, I'm often tempted to think that university executives regard their academic staff as impediments to their managerialist ambitions, and not as partners in the provision of good quality education.

Having now seen the text of the motion I think I understand a bit more about why it was passed - it's certainly understandable that staff wouldn't want potetially actionable material about them available on websites for all to see. Although I have to say that what's going on at Bolton doesn't sound like it would fall within that category - it's a campaign to make a point about not having context to the feedback they receive. I am, however, concerned over the potential for the loss of free speech that this motion implies. Although the motion appears to be targeted at abusive individuals, might it not also inadvertantly catch out students who have a valid point and who have expressed it constructively? Regarding the issue of students primarily providing feedback when they have poor marks, perhaps that is true, but why not conduct the feedback before they have their marks?

Two things: (1) Crysanthemum - one shouldn't assume that any correlation between negative criticism and poor marks is solely or largely caused by dissatisfaction with marks given - it could indeed be a sign of poor teaching, but equally it could reflect a character trait whereby underperformers ususally blame external circumstances rather than their own efforts - this is a well known phenomenon and is not restricted to politicians. (2) Anonymous feedback - there's something of a problem with this - in academia, we don't normally regard anonymous sources as academically credible, especially where substantial work and/or important decisions rest on such material

We have an online system for student feedback. As an academic I find it very useful and it spurs me on to do better. Lets avoid the trivial rhetoric and assume that the comments and scores need to be from a suitable sample size. As academics we grade students, why are we afraid of them grading our performance. We can always do better. Let's embrace the challenge and improve our game!

"In academia, we don't normally regard anonymous sources as academically credible, especially where substantial work and/or important decisions rest on such material". Er, we do, actually. What about anonymous peer review (which as it happens, I don't personally support -- I think reviewers/referees should not be anonymous)?

I think a balance needs to be struck, we have a job to do, and we have to accept criticism when we do it poorly. That said, the immaturity of some individuals can let down a perfectly effective system, if there is no way monitoring appropriate responses. PS high fees? Please, look across the pond westwards for high fees, or indeed your yearly tax statement.

As a rule of thumb, the less bright the student the less able s/he is to recognize the actual quality of the learning experience offered in HE and mistake slick teaching for the best learning opportunities. I've no doubt that before Stephen Hawking lost his natural speech and could communicate without electronic support, but in a difficult to understand way, students at certain, shall we say, less respected institutions would have moaned and called for some media trained slick alernative. Why make the effort to learn from a leading researcher in the field when you can have someone with a fraction of the intellect but who can animate the subject for those students whose attention span would be pushed to cope with a two minute clip on You Tube?

Students quite rightly are aware of their rights, but can neglect the fact that they also have responsibilities - including the responsibility not to defame, harass, bully etc. Just as the NHS has developed zero tolerance polices towards patients (customers) who mistreat staff, universities must do the same. The UCU can lead the way by bringing a few high profile cases in defamation, under the Protection from Harassment Act etc. If individual students can't be identified then students' union officials should be targeted for incitement etc.

Anonymous student feedback differs from anonymous peer review. Peer review is anonymous only for the authors; the journal editor knows fully well who the referees are.

At Harvard, where I work and study, anonymous feedback submitted electronically is the norm, and has been for a number of years. Students are required to submit detailed course evaluations for professors, teaching assistants, materials etc. before they pass the class, and this material is then compiled and presented to next year's cohort. There are many clear advantages to this: incoming students can base their decisions n which classes to select based on years of data from previous students, and students needn't fear that negative criticism will harm their relationship with an individual professor. Nonetheless, I'm certain if offensive or puerile material was submitted action would be taken - another advantage of an electronic system is the capability for administrators to track offending material back to its author if necessary. I can see no good reason to object to such a system.

Perhaps some background should be put on record in this debate? There is an important relationship to recognise between a student and his/her tutor and a contractual one between that tutor (employee) and the university (employer). The employer has a legal ‘duty of care’ to its employees and particularly so if those employees are abused, harassed, slandered or libelled as part of their job. Firstly, when is a student a ‘customer’? Where it is a matter of process the student is the customer e.g. dealing with the forms in terms of entry, providing information, providing a satisfactory and reasonable teaching and learning environment etc. In the teaching and learning environment, however, there is a responsibility on the teacher and an expectation on the part of the student which is deeper than a purchaser/provider relationship, because the student, has to bring experience, motivation, application, knowledge, skills to the process. The teacher is the custodian of what is transmitted, and, although a student may properly be given degrees of choice, that choice has to be within the framework determined by the teacher and the academic community. It cannot be an equal relationship because the student (by definition) does not have what the teacher has in terms of prior knowledge, experience, and further the teacher is responsible for making judgements about the student. A student will have valid views, and be requested for them, on course content, resource provision, but when it comes to making personal remarks or qualitative judgements about the performance of a teacher, or any member of staff, there are very clear boundaries to observe. It would be reasonable for a student to register his/her concern if he/she were not provided with the information needed about their module, the assessment, staff contact details etc. It would be reasonable for a student to register his/her concern if he/she did not receive feedback on work, the module aims and objectives appeared not to be followed etc. It is not sensible, nor reasonable, to require students to make subjective judgements on whether the teaching ‘was consistently good’ nor any other wording which implied such judgement. Setting aside the lack of any real or useful meaning in this request (i.e. what do we mean by ‘good’), it can potentially be a vehicle for defamatory comments. These may then become libellous when passed around by electronic means (yes, don’t ask for feedback electronically unless the structure of the form and the replies are strictly regulated). The quality of a member of staff’s teaching is subject to peer review and is done by qualified and experienced individuals. We are also required to have suitable qualifications, or equivalent experience, and be expected to be members of appropriate professional associations. There should be proper procedures to follow within any University if a student has a particular problem with a teacher, or any member of staff. These should be followed and student feedback forms not be used as a substitute for taking forward a genuine complaint. The Employer (in this case the University) has a responsibility to its staff as well as to the students. Thus the boundaries of the ‘student as a customer’ need careful definition and maintenance. A member of staff could take action against the employer for not designing appropriate feedback procedures and not regulating them appropriately. Education is not a product you buy off the shelf like baked beans, and we should be wary of allowing the erosion, or even destruction of the proper student/teacher relationship, and allowing what should be constructive comment about programmes of study to be replaced by personal comments about individuals.

As a long time member of University staff I have seen the changes from few students to many; from almost all UK, "white" and well off to a cross section of the world, and the change in society where people now don't sit still and put up as they used to. Also, I have seen students go from grant paid to being saddled with enormous loans and debts. Students are now CUSTOMERS. They have to pay back; and they want satisfaction that we are obliged to provide. Some day, the NUS will discover how much they could acheive regarding student health and safety, which they now only toy with. Then we will have to brace ourselevs again. A longer view of history shows that you listen carefully now or uncomfortably later on. This incident is a rough form of communication, but it's worked. My guess (as a parent, and husband of one who works in a secondary school) is that this staff student committee was not too hot at Bolton -but it will be from now on. It's a hard world where you have to give people what you signed up to give them. It's harder still to see in black and white that they don't just love us mindlessly like the dependent children they are trying hard not to remain as. Earthquakes happen when the tectonic plates get stuck and then can only let it all go in one big catastrophe. The virtue of democracy (=listening) is that we can arrange many little slips that may not be welcome but hurt no-one. When I was young we told ourselves that we were the future. We were right; it's always the young that are the future. Listening face to face is less comfortable than reading email, but less easy to get wrong. We're the grownups; let's start listening.