How student feedback works

Quality Assurance

The responsibilities of the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee fall in two main, closely-related areas: reviewing standards of assessment processes and enhancing teaching quality. We cover all courses administered by the Biomedical Teaching Organisation, including those run as part of the programmes jointly awarded with Zhejiang University based in China.

Programmes run by the Biomedical Teaching Organisation

Programmes jointly awarded with Zhejiang University

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Assessment

Quality assurance processes for assessment includes many elements. Some assignments, especially those of high value such as the Honours dissertation, are marked by two independent markers. Marking in all other assignments is moderated to ensure consistency between markers. Examples of work, together with marks and feedback, are assessed by an External Examiner who has expertise and experience in both the subject and UK higher education standards.

External examining

The External Examiner and Course Assessment Group (CAG), including the Course Organiser and other members of teaching staff, also review the distribution of course marks overall to ensure they are an appropriate assessment of student work on the course. The Course Assessment Group and the External Examiner report to the Board of Examiners, who use this guidance to ratify or adjust marks on the course. They also take recommendations from the Special Circumstances Committee into account, as well as enforcing penalties for late submission and misconduct. The Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee reviews evidence from all of these sources to make recommendations for future years.

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Student feedback

The Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee reviews feedback from students in various forms: End-of Course Questionnaires, minutes of Student-Staff Liaison Committee meetings or Mid-course Feedback where used, and the various external student experience surveys.

Course Enhancement Questionnaires

Minutes of Student-Staff Liaison Committee meetings

Student experience surveys

We consider this feedback along with information from assessment review and a reflective report from Course Organisers. The Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee has two main outputs: an annual report that enters the central University of Edinburgh quality processes and a list of recommendations that we send to the Biomedical Sciences Learning and Teaching Committee (LTC).

University Quality processes

Typically these recommendations will be applicable to all courses but we will also make recommendations specific to individual courses. The Biomedical Sciences Learning and Teaching Committee is then responsible for disseminating guidance to Course Organisers. One thing we routinely find in this process is that students often feel their voice is not being heard even though Course Organisers really care about what students think and make changes based on this.

Sharing good teaching practice

The Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee also shares good teaching practice found in course reviews with other academic staff, a process also carried out by the Deanery’s Teaching Network and annual Learning and Teaching Forum.

BMTO Learning and Teaching Network

The Senate Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee also issues advice and requirements to the Learning and Teaching Committee which takes into account practice across the whole university. University quality processes are ultimately answerable to QAA Scotland (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education) who monitor the quality of higher education in Scotland primarily through Enhancement-Led Institutional Reviews.

QAA Scotland

Enhancement-led Institutional Review

Some Course and Programme exceptions

Some exceptions to the illustrated processes do exist, for example:

• In many courses, mid-course feedback is integrated into student-staff liaison committee meetings.
• For Senior Honours core courses and Postgraduate courses, the scrutiny otherwise carried out by Course Assessment Groups often occurs in the board of examiners instead.
• The Programme Coordination Group replaces some of the functions of the Learning and Teaching Committee for undergraduate courses at the Zhejiang-Edinburgh joint institute.”