As a student who has been at Birmingham City University for four years at this point, I’ve not only taken part in several different modules within the university, but additionally, I’ve received feedback from all of the modules I’ve completed throughout both my bachelor’s and master’s degree. I’m raising this issue now as I think that, ultimately, this isn’t an issue that can change without the Students’ Union’s help.
While I appreciate that different lecturers are going to have different styles for providing feedback on work, and while I further understand that marks are subject to a moderation process that tries to ensure all marking from any lecturer is fair – I have some concerns about the process which have stayed relatively constant throughout my time at university.
For a start, feedback is not just inconsistent in style – but is inconsistent in quality for some of my modules. Feedback should be easy to understand and something I can learn from, but this isn’t always the case – and sometimes I walk away from reading feedback understanding less about where I need to improve than when I walked in. This is a common issue I’ve heard from many other students in different modules, so I know it’s not something I’m biased on.
To add to this, while I’m not saying that I need to know my markers all the time when I’m getting marked by people I’ve never seen or met – and then I’m being asked to reach out to these people if I need their comments expanded on – it feels a bit unrealistic, as sometimes markers provide comments that are quite hurtful to hear – and if I’m receiving comments like this from someone that I don’t know, the last thing I want to do is meet with them so they can re-iterate these comments to my face.
The most common resolution to this might be to say “Well, use the academic disciplinary procedure if you think feedback is unfair” – but realistically I don’t think this part of the system is very fair either. The procedure is quite daunting to go through as it feels like you’re trying to get someone in trouble – and from what I know and from what I’ve heard it’s not very student-friendly – which puts me off using it even if I feel like I have a valid concern.
While I can only talk from my perspective – I know these are issues that many students at Birmingham City University encounter every time marking comes out, and not only this – I know as a school representative that these are problems that appear every single year in all faculties. As a Students’ Union – I strongly feel that more should be done to advocate for better practices that might aim to fix these issues. As a result, I’m asking for the Students’ Union to:
1. Advocate for the university to revise guidance surrounding providing feedback during assessments. New guidance should be based on student feedback to allow for a student-informed approach and, If possible, this guidance should be enforced for all academics.
2. Advocate for the university to better humanise markers, making them more approachable when it comes to asking questions before or after the module is assessed. This might be done through something like a “meet your markers” session per module, where markers introduce themselves to students and tell them what they’re looking for in assessments.
3. Advocate for the university to look at its academic disciplinary procedure when it comes to marking disputes, with the overall goal being to make the procedure more student-friendly in its language and in the way they handle the next steps. How they do this should be based, also, on student feedback.
I feel that, if these three things are followed and implemented by the university, more helpful assessment feedback should be provided. While there will, of course, be students who are upset if they did not get the mark they wanted – by following these suggestions, I’d expect that the student will have more opportunities to learn from where they’ve fallen down and will have a greater chance to pick themselves up in the future.