Initiative Lead
University of Limerick

Primary Contact
Sinéad O'Sullivan
sinead.osullivan@ul.ie

€49700

Enhancement across Disciplines

The University of Limerick provides a number of channels to allow students evaluate and provide feedback on their learning experience. The most common student evaluation channels take the form of surveys, which range from institutionally sponsored surveys to local level initiatives. Known challenges with this approach include a lack of oversight and governance of the volume, frequency and timing of survey activity and the resulting impact on student response rates. This in turn, affects the perception of the reliability and validity of that feedback.

In many cases, the formal survey reporting mechanisms at institutional, faculty, unit and programme level rely predominantly on manual processes. This resource-intensive approach elongates the period between an issue arising and the opportunity for action and closure of the feedback loop. As the resulting datasets and reports are viewed in isolation and not correlated, institutional capacity to respond effectively to the student voice at programme and discipline level is reduced.

This interdisciplinary T&L initiative proposes to take a first principles approach to evaluating why and how student feedback is requested across a range of disciplines and learning contexts from the perspective of teaching staff, students and faculty management. Based on the outputs of this work, an institution wide Student Evaluation Policy will be developed. Central to this policy will be associated procedures for closing the feedback loop. A supporting Learning Analytics Policy, leveraging existing outputs from the SHEILA, ORLA & DESSI projects will be developed to take advantage of recent enhancements in the University’s business intelligence provision.