Student Experience and Engagement: SOFiA

Suffolk Online Feedback in Action (SOFiA)

SOFiA enables students to provide feedback in relation to all aspects of their student experience. The new platform also has the potential to be a one-stop-shop for the submission of feedback. This in turn would provide the University with a holistic view of the (perceived) student experience, enabling analysis of data at pan-university, School, course and service level.  

Feedback can be offered as:

• Something working well
• Something working less well
• A new idea

The Process:

Learners at Suffolk access SOFiA via any internet enabled device.  Following the onscreen guidance and questions, choosing whether they want their feedback anonymous or named.  Once they select the theme of their feedback and give details, the system will push the feedback to the appropriate person via email.  Where the feedback relates to areas of a module/course, the feedback will be passed to the Course Leader.

Anonymous Submission 

Where the feedback is anonymous it isn't possible to reply to the sender, the feedback is provided as information to be discussed amongst the module/course team.

Named Submission

When receiving feedback all that needs to be done when ready to respond is to simply reply to the email.  The system will forward the reply to the learner that submitted the feedback, the reply is also stored against the original submission allowing the Student Experience Team to monitor that the feedback loop is closed.

Monitoring

The Student Experience Team have access to a dashboard view of all submissions through SOFiA.  This allows the team to monitor engagement with the tool, track that the feedback loop is being closed in a timely fashion and any trends in the data where appropriate interventions may be made.

How to Respond

Feedback may fall into a number of categories to determine how you reply, considerations should be given to:

• individual items that can be responded to on a one-to-one basis
• issues that are straightforward and easily addressed to the mutual satisfaction of learners and staff
• suggestions that may require wider consultation (ie with learner or staff or both) before a course of action can be determined
• situations that may require monitoring over a period of time to determine whether action is appropriate
• requests that are beyond the scope of the Course Team, School, Directorate and need to be passed on to appropriate people for action
• identification of good practice that may be worthy of emulating and/or sharing

Responding

• Take enough time: set aside enough time to review the feedback – don’t try to do it in a few ‘stolen’ moments. 
• Look at the number of comments: if the response rate or the rate of comments is low, then you are more likely to get extreme (untypically negative or untypically positive) results. Higher response rates give a better representation of the overall picture.
• Look for patterns: for example, you can read through the comments once to see what the major themes are and then go through them a second time to find out how often each theme is mentioned. Remember that hurtful comments can attract your attention, but they may not be very representative.
• Discuss the feedback with learners, this can be done through presenting the major themes to students, you can highlight points you are taking on board, points you disagree with, and points you don’t understand. 
• Discuss the feedback with a colleague: talk through the comments and your views on them with a colleague. Lecturers who discuss feedback are more likely to improve their teaching, when compared to lecturers who review their feedback alone.
• Don’t take it personally: when learners criticise teaching it can feel as if they are criticising you personally. Try to focus on what the feedback says about what you do (not about who you are).

Dealing with harsh or hurtful comments

Learner are reminded that they should not make comments which are hurtful or impolite. While the vast majority of learners respect this, a minority do not. In the case of harsh or hurtful learner feedback, remember:

• Almost all lecturers – no matter how well they teach – have got hurtful feedback at one time or another. You are not alone!
• Your learners are like any group of people – some may be rude, many are not. Remember that harsh or hurtful comments are not the views of your class as a whole, only the views of that individual.
• Some learners may be hurtful in order to get a response from you. Giving those learners prominence (e.g. by showing the comment to the whole class) may simply encourage them. On the other hand, it can be helpful to remind learners in class that balanced feedback is more likely to have a positive effect than harsh or hurtful comments.