Appendix 1
Recommendations from the Students’ Union Feedback Campaign, the summary of SSLC
annual reports, and SU Top Ten for consideration by departments
Departments are asked to comment (if possible using the grid below) on the following
recommendations arising from SSLC annual reports and the Students’ Union Feedback
Campaign. The recommendations are in bold. Text in italics has been provided for clarification
and did not form part of the original recommendation. A number of the recommendations would
suggest that, in some instances, departments are not meeting the expectations of the QA Code
of Practice. Where this is the case, please indicate the reason for this and any measures that
might be put in place to ensure compliance in future.
Recommendation
1
2
Investigate why feedback isn’t being
returned in the three week timeframe set
out by the QA Code of Practice. Attempt
to discern whether there are any
potential systems that could be rendered
more efficient. (Recommendation 11
from SSLC annual report,
Recommendation 1 from Feedback
Campaign)
Departments to look into providing
general exam feedback via Moodle.
Departments to promote the availability
of this feedback once it has been up
loaded. (Recommendation 12 from SSLC
annual report)
(QA16 states “Continuing students should
receive feedback on their academic
performance in formal written examinations,
but this need not necessarily be individual
feedback.”)
3
Explore opportunities to give students
greater access to their exam scripts.
(Recommendation 20 from SSLC annual
report).
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
Student feedback in the SoM suggests that delivery of
coursework feedback beyond the formal 3 semester
week limit in the Code of Practice is not a major issue.
However, if any problems did arise, it is unclear how, in
the present system, they would be detected. Paper
feedback is returned to students via the Programme
Offices. Relying on the staff in either reception area to
record and police feedback dates is outside their normal
remits. Discussion with other Faculties on effective
systems for monitoring delivery of feedback would be
welcome.
Where, in Moodle, would this feedback go? The logical
place is the unit-specific Moodle courses that register
students automatically through SAMIS. However, these
have their student registrations wiped clean 3 weeks after
the end of the unit, which is before the results are
confirmed in either Semester 1 or Semester 2. See
http://www.bath.ac.uk/catalogues/information/staff/periodslot-dates.html
Currently, SoM practice is to encourage generic feedback
but accept that this can take place through a variety of
delivery methods: in-class briefings and e-mails to groups
lists being most common. If a School-wide Moodle
course, following the good practice example cited in the
report, is to be used for this purpose, then collecting
around 200 reports would be a significant logistical
exercise. Such a resource would, presumably, not be
available to those students from other departments who
are taking SoM units (and presumably vice-versa –
student on SoM programmes taking units from other
departments would not have access to to feedback from
those units).
Currently the advice to staff in the SoM is that they
should concentrate exam feedback efforts on those
students who need to do retrievals. This is in line with the
Recommendation
(QA16 states “At the discretion of the Head
of Department and in alignment with
departmental policies on feedback, students
may be given access to their examination
scripts …”)
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
statement in QA16 “At the discretion of the Head of
Department and in alignment with departmental policies
on feedback, students may be given access to their
examination scripts eg in cases of substantial concern
about individual performance, a tutor may give detailed
feedback to the individual student which may include
reviewing the examination script.”
If we are to go wider than this, it will need to be a system
rather than left to the discretion of the lecturer. Otherwise
some lecturers will and others will not provide detailed
exam feedback, leading to inequities in treatment of both
staff and students.
The School LTQC discussed various possibilities of
systematising the provision of access to exam feedback,
some of which would require the marker to be present
and some of which would not. Previous guidance from
the LTEO has implied that the marker must be present
while the student sees the script, but this is less clear
than in older versions of the Quality Code.
4
Departments to consider spreading
deadlines of all submitted work and to
establish a submission calendar; e.g. for
courseworks and lab reports.
(Recommendation 17 from SSLC annual
report).
Most deadlines occur during the last few
weeks of term. It would appear that
students are not always receiving their
assignments far enough in advance which
contributes to the problems with deadlines
for coursework.
Spreading deadlines for all students is impossible on
programmes with a wide range of options choice (BSc
Business Administration; MSc Management) or where
core units are taught from different departments (BSc
Accounting and Finance; BSc International Management
and Modern Languages). The SoM also runs a number
of generally available units. These are available to all
departments in the University and could not have their
assessments scheduled according to the needs of any
one programme.
It should be said that student representatives have raised
the issue of bunching of coursework deadlines. However,
the point was made at the Teaching and Quality
Committee that all units need a certain amount of content
to have been covered before meaningful assessment
activities can be undertaken. The responsibility then rests
with the students to organise their workload, which is
common practice in most parts of UK Higher Education,
provided they have had sufficient time to do this.
The general guidance in the SoM is therefore that
coursework briefs usually be released at the start of the
unit and certainly with sufficient time for students to
complete the assessment, bearing in mind other
commitments they will have in their studies.
The Options choice Moodle information for UGs in the
SoM includes the previous year’s coursework
specification, so in most cases students will have
1
Recommendation
5
University to investigate where
anonymous marking can be implemented
and to implement procedures to ensure
this occurs. (Recommendation 21 from
SSLC annual report).
This recommendation will also be
considered by ULTQC.
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
advance notice of the type of coursework being set and
likely timings.
Anonymous submission is more practical where
assignments are submitted through the upgraded version
of Moodle. This is genuinely anonymous, in the sense
that a new code is generated with every student
submission rather than having a paper submission with
student registration number as the identifier. It also
facilitates the return of marked assignments and
feedback through the new bulk upload facility.
The SoM is happy with the acknowledgement that some
forms of assessment are inherently non-anonymous and
is prepared to work with the University to develop a
standard format for anonymous submission of individual
coursework. It sees encouragement of staff to receive
coursework via Moodle, and returning feedback via the
same route, as the best way forward.
6
Develop policies on fairer group work
marking. (SU 2013/14 Top Ten issue)
Departments are requested to provide
information on mechanisms they have in
place to ensure fair group work marking.
(QA16 states “Where a unit is assessed by
groupwork and makes a significant
contribution (7% or more) to the final
classification, the Unit Convenor must
ensure that the assessment is devised in
such a way that includes an element of
individual assessment and the boundary
between cooperation and collusion is made
clear to students at the outset. Setting an
assessment which only entails a mean mark
being awarded to all members of the group
will not normally be appropriate. Similarly
individual feedback should be provided
where appropriate.”)
7
We assume that by “fairer group work marking”, the
SSLC report means “identification of variable contribution
where appropriate”. The School is continuing to work on
its group mark allocation process. For some years, it has
used a formula to allocate marks where the whole group
agrees there is a difference in the contribution between
members.
There is a constant tension between the desire for clarity,
which results from a purely quantitative approach (i.e.
marks vary with quantity of input rather than quality of
output) and the wild differences between group members’
marks that can result from a rigid application of the
formula. The School is examining practice from other
institutions where a more sophisticated approach is taken
and is soon to decide on a new policy.
NB: the quote from QA16 appears to relate only to group
assignments which make a “significant contribution” to
the final programme average. Is this the only concern of
this section? The only piece of group work that this
applies to in the School is BSc Business Administration
Final Year Project. The current marking sheet for that unit
does require the specific contributions of each group
member to be identified. There is also a process whereby
markers review individual statements prior to the
allocation of marks and allow students to discuss their
contribution in an individual viva.
Develop and utilise feedback sheets that
2
Recommendation
encourage constructive feedback and
meet the feedback requirements of
students. (Recommendation 2 from the
SU Feedback Campaign)
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
Feedback sheets, including comments and grading
against specified criteria for the assignment, are standard
practice in the School of Management.
We have had some good practice in the design of
feedback sheets communicated to the Committee and
will be including that in further guidance to academic
staff.
8
Departmental Feedback Policies, and any
subsequent updated versions, to be put
These are available in the SoM SSLC Moodle courses
on the department Moodle pages in an
and the Moodle course for Undergraduate information
easily accessible manner so that they are (MUSAS).
readily available to all students of that
department.
(Recommendation 5 from the SU
Feedback Campaign)
All recommendations relating to the
provision of information to students will be
considered centrally by the Public
Information Subcommittee. The
effectiveness of Feedback Policies is also
being reviewed by the SU and the LTEO.
At present it is QA CoP requirement that
Feedback Policies are included in
Programme Handbooks. Departments are
asked to comment specifically on what they
consider to be the best mechanism(s) to
communicate feedback policies to both staff
and students.
9
Investigate the potential to create
marking sheets to be used across all
programmes as standard.
(Recommendation 8, SU Feedback
Campaign)
Marking sheets = marking schemes,
marking grids providing detailed
assessment and grading criteria.
In relation to coursework QA16 states that
inter alia students should “receive the
assessment criteria and any relevant
grading criteria.”
10
The School has previously investigated a standard set of
assessment categories to be used on feedback sheets
across all units. It proved impossible to produce criteria
beyond the very blandest that met the needs of all units,
both qualitative and quantitative and theoretical and
practical.
The School has had a set of generic assessment criteria
that apply to each of the different levels of taught unit
which is published in student handbooks and made
known via unit Moodle courses to students not taking
SoM programmes. Students have made the point that
these criteria apply most directly to essay-based units,
and there is still room for considerable variety in the
detailed grading criteria for specific assignments. The
variety is catered for in the feedback sheets for each
piece of coursework (see above).
Meetings with personal tutors should be
3
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
timetabled where possible and in
The Executive of the School of Management has made it
accordance with QA33.
clear to staff that personal tutor activity is to be
(Recommendation 7 from SSLC annual
undertaken in line with QA33. Personal tutor support for
report)
students in the SoM is concerned with pastoral issues
and general review of academic progress. The School
Timetabled = in the timetable at the
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee questioned
beginning of the semester, and not arranged whether the proposal for timetabled sessions would be
on an ad hoc basis by the personal tutor.
more appropriate where the personal tutoring system
included teaching activity related to particular units.
This recommendation has also been
referred to the Senior Tutors Forum for
consideration.
Recommendation
Departments are specifically asked to
consider whether QA33 be revised to make
it a requirement that personal tutorials be
timetabled.
11
Action on Departments organising the
OUEs for modules provided by multiple
departments to share with all relevant
departments. Action plans from the
hosting department to be communicated
to the relevant departments.
(Recommendation 15, SSLC annual
report)
Any user of SAMIS-on-the-Web with Director of Studies
access rights can view any evaluation from any
department in the University. There is no need for unit
providers to share the evaluations with other
departments.
The School is happy to share action plans with other
departments, and the head of Learning and Teaching
Quality will liaise with the Director of Studies for CrossFaculty Teaching to ensure that this happens. In the case
of the Generally Available Units, this might require a
blanket message to all Directors of Studies or Heads of
Department in the University, so some indication of who
is the most relevant person in other faculties/departments
to share this information with would be helpful.
Any communication about action plans from other
departments to the SoM should come to the Head of
Learning and Teaching Quality and the Director of
Studies for Cross-Faculty Teaching.
12
Reading lists to be sent at least 10 weeks
before the start of semester one to
students and to the Departmental
Librarian, so that the students can have
sufficient time to analyse the list and so
that the Departmental Librarians have
adequate time to update their collection.
(Recommendation 18, SSLC annual
report).
The discussion of this recommendation suggested that
the main focus would be on the type of publication that is
a core textbook for a unit.
We will give the Departmental Librarians access to the
Moodle course which holds Undergraduate options
information, which includes the previous years unit
outlines and reading lists. This will give them an idea of
which units have core textbooks.
The Library has indicated that it would
prefer to receive reading lists prior to
4
Recommendation
Department feedback – School of Management
Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee
students so that they have sufficient time to
order materials.
Library would also like reading lists to make
clear which books are core / supplementary
etc.
Departments to consider specifically making
it a requirement of the QA Code of Practice
that reading lists are provided to the Library
10 weeks before the start of semester 1(with
reading lists being made available to
students shortly after this deadline) and that
the importance of the reading materials
(core or supplementary) be indicated.
This recommendation will also be
considered by the Public Information
Subcommittee.
13
Departments with optional modules to
look into recording lecture samples for
publication with optional module
information, so that future students can
make a more informed decision. Use of
Panopto should be encouraged as a
teaching resource. (Recommendation 19
from SSLC annual report).
This recommendation is also being
considered by the Public Information
Subcommittee.
Practices on Panopto vary in the SoM. There is some
recording of lectures, while others find it more useful to
use the Desktop version to produce short presentations
of some of the more complex material on a unit than to
bulk-upload every minute of every lecture. The desktop
version also has the advantage that there is no student
audience present whose permission would have to be
asked for the recording to take place.
Is there a systematic way of organising the recording of
lectures across campus or is it up to each individual staff
member to put the recording into effect? If it is the latter,
there will have to a significant management effort put into
ensuring that all the relevant recordings have been made
and collected into one place.
It should be noted that staff changes will often mean that
the staffing of particular units will change from year to
year, while the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) will
remain constant. Is it worth sending a message to
students that the ILOs determine what they should be
getting from a unit?
5