“Let Me Tell You What I Really Think”: Responding to Student Feedback

Audience Level: 
All
Institutional Level: 
Higher Ed
Strands (Select 1 top-level strand. Then select as many tags within your strand as apply.): 
Abstract: 

This presentation will look at some of the feedback we have received from our students in our Engineering online programs over the years and the resolutions we came to in response to their complaints.

Extended Abstract: 

“The quality of the course is TERRIBLE. You can watch better videos on the internet that have been taken with a camera phone.” ~ Anonymous student comment

Students need to know their voice is being heard. It’s not enough just to email out a survey, you actually need to sit down and learn from what they are telling you. When students take the time to complete a survey, it is helpful to then respond back to them with what you did as a result of their taking the survey.

Each semester we send a couple surveys out to our distance student population to get a feel for how the course is going. The first survey, sent a couple weeks into the course, focuses on the technology. We are able to get a gauge on how well this is going in-house but it is also helpful to get the student perspective.

In addition, we send a survey toward the end of the semester to get feedback on the actual course and ask questions about the instructor, TA, customer service, etc.

In this presentation, I will share examples of student feedback we have received over the years and how we responded.

Students provide all kinds of feedback regarding technology, courses, instructors, processes and will at times include their own solutions to the issues they present to us. Granted, it is generally not something we can, or need to, respond to overnight, but over the course of time, we learn about how we can better serve the students moving forward.

Conference Session: 
Concurrent Session 7
Session Type: 
Discovery Session
Keywords: