Reporting to students on actions taken in response to SETU results

Reporting back to students

Following review and approval at the Faculty level of unit SETU results and recommendations for changes, these results and changes should be reported back to students. While Faculties and Schools may have their own specific methods for communicating this information to their students, Deakin's Evaluation of Teaching and Units procedure indicates that appropriate methods for doing this include, "As a minimum requirement, faculties will provide feedback through ... the Unit Guide ... [and] ... discussions in lectures by the end of the semester." (Deakin University, 2009). If using the web for this, the DSO section for a unit is an obvious choice as an online location for reporting back to students. A comprehensive report to students would include at least the following three items.

1 - A summary of the SETU results

This should include at least the mean item ratings for the ten SETU items. In addition to this basic information, other items that could be shown include:

• a summary of the open-ended student comments;
• teacher-specific ratings and/or comments; and
• standard deviation, percentage agreement and percentage disagreement for item ratings.

A complete tabular summary of the quantitative results for the ten SETU items can be extracted from the Planning Unit's unit evaluation website at:http://www.deakin.edu.au/unit_eval/results/general.php

2 - A contextual interpretation of the SETU results

To assist students to interpret the presented SETU results, it is valuable to provide some background information about the unit. Where relevant, this could include the following issues:

• was there anything especially notable about the unit offering - for example, was it the first offering, had the unit been through a major revision, had there been major changes in unit staffing, etc?;
• SETU results for items that relate closely to the key objectives of a unit are worthy of comment;
• high ratings can be celebrated and low ratings can be noted as items for review and action;
• presenting the School and/or Faculty mean scores provides some benchmarks for comparison to the unit results;
• if there are trends evident in SETU results over successive offerings of the unit, these might be worthy of comment; and
• if there are concerns about resources or services that are important for the success of the unit, but provided by third parties (i.e., Library resources, IT access, etc.), it can be noted that those issues have been referred to relevant service providers for attention.

If the unit chair/panel have a particular view on the success or otherwise of the unit offering, the report to students can be used to provide a sense of this.

3 - Details about specific changes made (or to be made) to the unit

Where changes are to made to a unit arising from review and consideration of SETU results, these should be reported to students in a factual manner. Generally, there should be an obvious link between the SETU results, the interpretation of the results, and, the subsequent unit changes made. If there are no particular changes made to a unit, then, this outcome of the SETU review process should also be reported.

While positive SETU results are easy to report to students, unit changes will most probably arise where SETU results suggest areas for improvement. As noted above, students are motivated to participate in evaluation of teaching by the desire to improve units and teaching, and, by the expectation that their feedback will be acted upon. There is no reason to attempt to disguise or unduly sugar coat low SETU scores or other areas of concern arising from SETU results. Tackling student feedback openly and constructively demonstrates to students that their expectations of the unit evaluation process are being taken seriously, and, real actions are being taken in response to their feedback. If you are unsure of how to present information in a report to students, seek the advice of your School leadership or consult the Institute of Teaching and Learning education consultancy service.

If no SETU data is available from the immediate previous offering of a unit (for example, due to a low number of respondents, there being no offer of the unit in the previous regular semester, etc.), then, options for reporting include:

• basing the report on the last complete report to students;
• which could be supplemented by a report from the unit chair on any matters of interest relating to unit changes arising from the immediate previous unit offering.

There will be some cases where there is no current or historical SETU data for a unit, for example, a brand new unit offering. In such cases, all that can really be done is to explain why there is no report on SETU results.

Activity

Have you ever previously prepared a report back to students based on SETU results from a previous offering of a unit? If yes, what types of information did you include in the report? If yes, in what form(s) was the report communicated to students? If no, what types of information would you include in a report back to students?

Forward to: An example report to students