Quantifying Quality: The importance of student feedback

Higher education institutions throughout the United Kingdom are now scrutinised by assessors from the Quality Assurance Agency. The Agency's mission is to promote public confidence that quality of provision and standards of awards in higher education are being safeguarded and enhanced. This paper focuses initially on the subject review results and reports for the mathematics, statistics and operational research aspect of provision. Of the six areas that are graded, the one which consistently produces the poorest results is quality management and enhancement. The most common reasons why institutions lose marks in this category are identified and the second biggest area of weakness, namely, seeking and implementing student views, is examined in the context of a survey carried out by the Educational Development Unit at the University of Ulster. It is evident that student evaluation, whether of courses, teaching quality or the overall student experience, is extremely important and has a significant role to play in the quality assurance process. Finally, recent initiatives are reported that attempt to raise the profile of teaching and learning and reward staff committed to excellence in teaching.