Following complaints regarding the quality and timeliness of feedback, Politics Department Course Rep Graeme Osborne, has launched a campaign to provide students with more detailed comments.
Disgruntled students are encouraged to send in their past assessment forms as proof and post their complaints on a recently set up Facebook group. The campaign ties in with a wider effort launched by YUSU to tackle inconsistencies in feedback across departments.
Speaking to Vision, Osborne says he was approached by a number of students doing politics modules who were unhappy with the feedback given for assessments and exams. “After looking at some examples of feedback it was clear that there are major problems in some areas, including students receiving either partially or completely blank feedback forms, illegible comments, contradictory comments, or direct criticisms of their argument rather than the way in which they had presented.”
Johnny Pannell, a first year Politics student thinks “that they should give us far more guidance! Sometimes you were expected to have done something but were not even told about it.”
Large disparities between departments have also been revealed. Computer Science students can access their provisional marks online around two weeks after they have sat exams, and they also have access to their marked papers online. This starkly contrasts the system currently applied in the Politics Department, with a single hard copy sheet of feedback given out.
Osborne raised the matter to the Board of Studies, where he was given a mandate from the department to look into the issue. “The campaign is going well, I have identified a number of issues with the essay feedback forms and am waiting for the remaining exam results and feedback to come out before I start to bring everything together and look at making recommendations to the department.”
YUSU Academic Affairs Officer Charlie Leyland fully supports the campaign, stating that in addition to recognizing the issues with punctuality, quality and consistency of the feedback, the campaign is also about what departments are doing pro-actively to deal with those issues. “In a climate with very tight financial constraints it’s important that we strive to do the best with what we have, allocating resources where students will most benefit.”
The university’s press officer, David Garner, commented that “the Department of Politics is always interested in constructive suggestions about how to improve feedback, and welcomes them through the student representatives on Teaching Committee, the Board of Studies, the Board of Graduate Studies, and the Student-Staff Committee.”