Creating Collegial Frameworks to Tighten and Close Student Feedbacks

There is merit in lecturers seeking students’ perspectives on their learning experiences in order to foster high quality teaching and learning: Brookfield argues that simply seeking to understand students’ experiences of their learning is a key indicator of good teaching practice. However, students’ perspectives on learning experiences can be considered feedback only when lecturers acknowledge and act on them. That is, when outputs of a course, i.e. students’ reporting of their learning experiences, are used by the lecturer as inputs into the same course in a way that changes the course. When such feedbacks are created and applied within a course’s teaching term, the feedbacks can be of immediate developmental benefit, and visibly so for students. In this paper, we report and analyse lecturers’ responses to students’ reports of their learning experiences, consistent with Brookfield’s call for teachers to use students’ perspectives to support critical reflection on their teaching. Data were collected as part of a multi-institutional trial of the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme (PATS) across five Australian universities in 2012. The data analysed in this study comprise: (i) lecturer’s interpretations of students’ perspectives on their learning experiences; and (ii) lecturers’ decisions to vary or not vary teaching strategies and course management in response. Considering students’ reports of their learning experiences is typically a highly individualised aspect of teaching practice. In contrast, PATS creates a collegial and constructive framework in which responses to students’ experiences of teaching can be crafted.