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Knowing what to do with feedback can be difficult. By interpreting responses you can decide on what changes you would like to make that will respond to the needs of your students.
Interpreting suggestions
While students (and individuals in general) are pretty good at knowing how they feel about an experience, they are typically less adept at articulating why they feel that way and what would be the most effective way to resolve the situation.
Despite this, feedback is often offered as a specific suggestion about what should be done to change a situation. Some survey questions also actively invite suggestions; the SFS, for example, asks students to ‘suggest any improvements that could be made to this subject‘.
It’s not uncommon to respond to such feedback by implementing suggestions directly. It seems like the logical step – the students appear to be telling you what they want. Consequently, a student feedback response such as ‘I think the lectures should be shorter‘ might be met with a reduction in lecture time from an hour to 30 minutes, for example. Without understanding the exact problem with the lecture experience, this change could trigger comments after the next semester like ‘The lectures are too short – I don’t feel like I’m learning much from them’.
So what do you do to unpack the suggestions provided by students?
Responding to the core problem
By taking a moment to interpret what students might mean through their feedback suggestions you may start to see that there is a different core problem at hand, and due to this there may be a better way to respond.
If ‘I think the lectures should be shorter’ actually means ‘I’m getting bored‘ or ‘I can’t focus on this sort of content in this way for an hour’, the learning design solution may look very different from a simple reduction in lecture time. Alternatives might be to provide the same hour of learning, but include some interactive elements and opportunities for students to discuss in small groups, for example.
You may ultimately decide that your students’ survey suggestions are relevant and appropriate; the considered process of identifying potential causes and a range of possible solutions, however, will help you build a stronger foundation for sustainable and meaningful changes.