Provided by Institute of Education EPrints
Quality Enhancement for E-Learning Courses: The Role of Student
Feedback
Magdalena Jara and Harvey Mellar
Abstract
The collection of student feedback is seen as a central strategy to monitor the quality
and standards of teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions. The
increasing use of technology to support face-to-face, blended and distance courses
has led managers as well as practitioners to become increasingly concerned to
identify appropriate ways of assuring the quality of this e-learning provision. This
paper presents a study of the collection of student feedback in higher education e-
learning courses and the use of this feedback for quality assurance and
enhancement. We carried out a series of case studies of the procedures in place in
four e-learning courses, and in each case study we collected the quality assurance
documentation and interviewed stakeholders (administrators, educational
technologists, tutors and students). The comparative examination of these two sets
of data showed that the main strategies for collecting student feedback - module
evaluations and student representation - were both strongly affected by the
distinctive features of the mode of delivery in e-learning courses, and as a
consequence they were not able to adequately support quality enhancement. The
remote location of the students impacted on both student representation and on the
response rates for module evaluations. The enhancement function of the module
evaluations were adversely affected by lack of appropriate course management
arising from the disaggregation of course processes and the resulting ambiguity in
the allocation of responsibilities.
Keywords - distance education and telelearning; evaluation methodologies; post-
secondary education;
1. Introduction
Determining students’ views by a process of collecting feedback on their experience
is widely recognised as a central strategy for monitoring the quality and standards of
teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEFCE, 2002; HEFCE, 2003;
QAA, 2006). Following the Cook Report (HEFCE, 2002) which set out the information
about quality and standards of learning and teaching that should be collected by
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), the establishment of student views has become
a key aspect of quality assurance and enhancement processes in UK universities
(Watson, 2003). Harvey stresses the importance of establishing student views as a
central activity for enhancement, highlighting that to be effective the data collected
needs to be integrated into a regular cycle of analysis, reporting, action and feedback
(Harvey, 2003).