Course feedback

Collecting course feedback is one part of the statutory evaluation process of education in Universities, which is provided for the Universities Act in Finland. Giving course feedback is voluntary for the students, but by giving feedback you can contribute to the development of the education. Giving constructive feedback is also an essential working life skill.

Course feedback plays an important role in developing the teaching and other activities in the University. With the help of feedback, the teachers can develop their own teaching and courses. Course feedback is collected to ensure and develop the quality of courses, curriculum, education, and the entire University of Oulu. Course feedback also affects the University's internal fund distribution.

In accordance with the Education Regulations, The Education Committee is responsible for collecting and processing student feedback in the Faculty. The Degree Programme Committee is responsible for collecting and processing student feedback in the Degree Programme. Issues raising from the feedback that concern the entire Degree Programmme, the Faculty or a wider group of students are handled within these above-mentioned committees.

Course feedback is also collected to support the teachers' professional development. The teachers have the right to use the anonymized course feedback as a reference, for example in a CV and for their own presentations.

The staff has the right to use anonymized course feedback for marketing purposes also.

Course feedback is given in Peppi. In the same system, where, among other things, you register for courses and can view your studies. The course feedback system is a Peppi plugin. You can access the front page of the course feedback system (the main view) from the FEEDBACK icon (speech bubble) in the top menu of your Peppi desktop.

The feedback system is based on Peppi's course registrations and automatically creates continuous and final feedback questionnaires for all the courses. Course feedback consists of three different types of questionnaires which are continuous feedback, mid-term feedback and final feedback. You can give continuous feedback throughout the course as many times as you want. Continuous feedback questionnaires are automatically created for each course. If you suspend a course for any reason you can give feedback on it through the continuous feedback questionnaire. You can for example explain the reasons for suspending the course. The teacher may ask you to give mid-term feedback for example in the middle of the course by creating a mid-term feedback questionnaire. Final feedback is automatically collected from all the courses. The final feedback questionnaire consists of 14 general mandatory questions and possible teacher's additional questions. You can find step-by-step instructions for using the Course feedback plugin in Eduuni wiki.

Please, remember that good feedback is factual, appropriate, constructive, well-reasoned, and helps improve the course and teaching. In addition, it is important to bring out development ideas and things that are good and functional. So please always give constructive and positive feedback as well.

The course feedback you provide is pseudonymized, which means that your answers cannot be associated with your personal information in the feedback system provided by the University of Oulu. The staff of the University of Oulu will therefore receive the feedback you have given as completely unidentified. However, the system connects the respondent to the answers, (the system collects information on whether you have answered the course feedback survey addressed to you and sends a reminder message if necessary). However, none of system users, not even an administrator, will be able to see if you have given feedback or not nor the contents of your feedback.

If the feedback given is somehow threatening or otherwise inappropriate, discriminatory, or considered harassment, the University of Oulu has an obligation to find out the identity the person behind such feedback and address it. In such cases, the University of Oulu can verify the identity of the person through the service provider that is the technical administrator (Studyo Ltd), upon a separate request.

In degree programmes / faculties, the following roles can view and / or process feedback

• The student can read the summary report of the final feedback after the response time has ended, if at least three (3) students in total have given feedback and if the student has given feedback themselves. Student will never see any written feedback given by other students.
• The student has an opportunity to target written feedback to an individual teacher(s), in which case the feedback in question is only visible to the teacher to whom the feedback is targeted and to the person in charge of the course. All written feedback is always visible to the teacher in charge of the course.
• Course teacher (teacher in charge, teacher, part-time teacher, laboratory assistant, etc.) – sees feedback of the course they are teaching.
• Person in charge – sees feedback on the course they teaching. Sees also all the written feedback even if the feedback is targeted to another teacher.
• Programme Director – sees all the feedback of the Degree Programme
• Education Dean – sees all the feedback of the Faculty
• The Director of Extension school – sees feedback on all courses in the Extension school
• Vice Rector for Education – sees all the feedback
• Rector – sees all the feedback

In the Academic Affairs, the following roles see and process feedback

• Education Designer, Academic Affairs
• Solution Designer, Open University, Academic Affairs
• Service Manager, Academic Affairs
• Development Manager
• Lead Specialist, Academic Affairs
• Graduate School Coordinator, Academic Affairs
• Director, Academic Affairs

In addition, the following have been appointed as persons in charge of the feedback in the system level. With this role, they have access to all given feedback and they also process the feedback in accordance with their duties.

• Programme Directors
• Education Deans
• The Director of Extension school
• Assistant, Extension School, Academic Affairs
• Service Managers, Academic Affairs
• Development Managers
• Lead Specialist, Academic Affairs
• Kerttu Saalasti Institute's Education Designer
• Course feedback system administrators

In addition ICT Services Digital Pedagogy and Video Services team processes answers anonymously regarding the Final feedback questionnaire's question "10. The digital tools and digital teaching methods used in the course promoted my learning."

Instructions for use.