Closing the loop with students: why it so often goes wrong and what works

Whoever gives feedback and never hears what happens with it gives less next time. Everyone who runs evaluations knows that. Still, closing the feedback loop is the weakest point in practice, even among people who pay a lot of attention to it.

Where it goes wrong

The conversations show that the chain breaks in several places:

• Between collecting and analysing. The open answers go unread, so there is nothing to report back.
• Between analysing and deciding. A theme is found, but nobody decides anything about it, or it takes a long time.
• Between deciding and a visible change. A curriculum is only changed in a new academic year. For the student who gave the feedback it is then too late.

“An evaluation of a module that takes place now can lead to a change in two years.”

On top of that there is no standard approach. Within one institution some programmes share results through the learning environment, others in a newsletter, others in person at the start of the next module.

What works

These are no miracle cures, but they are things that turn out to help in practice.

1. Keep it small and quick. A short update within a few weeks, in plain language, beats a full report after a year. Say what you heard, what you'll do and what you won't.
2. Say what you're not changing, and why. Students often value an honest answer more than silence.
3. Give the programme a fixed place for the response. One institution had a mandatory teacher response that appeared visibly on the intranet. That shows it can be solved organisationally.
4. Report back per theme, not per student. That way you don't need to know who said what, and anonymous stays anonymous.
5. Use the moment students are there anyway. A few minutes in the first class of the next term, or a message in the learning environment.

The side that is often forgotten: the teacher

In one of the conversations a theme came up that I hadn't expected: negative student feedback can weigh heavily on teachers. If teachers shut down or take it personally, reporting back stalls. This came up in only one interview, so I present it as exploratory. But it is a good reason to share feedback with teachers step by step, with support from the team, and to make sure a teacher doesn't carry the hardest feedback alone.

And what about anonymity?

Reporting back and anonymous aren't in conflict. Whoever wants a message can leave a contact detail that is stored apart from the answers. The update then goes per theme to whoever raised that theme, without the organisation knowing who it was.