Online Student Feedback System

CAMPUS – If you think that you’re the only one having the examinations now, think again.

The Online Student Feedback System is now online from the 6th till the 20th November. This feedback system procures student feedback and evaluation on modules that they have taken for the semester. But more importantly, this is the chance for students to give an accurate — and anonymous — appraisal of their teachers.

Teachers are graded on a scale of 1-5 in the areas of their teaching style, ability and clarity amongst others. Students are advised to give feedback on both the strengths and weakness of their teachers, feedback that then would be collated by the system and be read by their respective department heads, as well as the Professors themselves.

How well a teacher does is also dependent on his or her a performance relative to the department average.

According to the feedback system, evaluation is only read after the release of the examination results, and anonymity is guaranteed by the system.

However, how ‘anonymous’ can the system really be? Will there be negative repercussions for students who leave scathing, and perhaps unjustified, criticisms of their lecturers?

According to 1st year English literature major Rachel Bok, it depends if students are “discerning enough to switch writing style for assignments and comments.” If they are “inclined to,” she says, “I believe that they will find out.”

Such a point is also echoed by 2nd year philosophy major, Asuka. “If it is a small class,” she says, “and if there have been essay assignments, the professor is able to guess to a certain extent.”  But she added that she doubts professors would actually “waste their time guessing which students wrote what”, and doing so would be highly “unprofessional” and pointless.

Ying, an Arts student, adds that sometimes for a large class, it may sometimes be meaningless for them to “know who wrote the nasty comments”, as they might not even recognise the students.

For some, the fear that their teachers may retaliate to scathing feedback is very real. For Alvin Chong, a 3rd year student, leaving a negative feedback once for a lecturer had some repercussions, or so he believes.

“I once left a negative feedback for this lecturer of mine in a small class,” he says. “And I suspected that I used some words in the feedback that allowed the teacher to recognise it was me.”

“The whole of the next semester, when I had to take his class again, I felt a little uncomfortable.”

“Somehow I felt that he was marking me down for my assignments. Maybe I felt I deserved better. But my grades were always below my expectations,” he says.

Why did he leave the negative feedback in the first place?

“It was because I felt he did not set a very good mid term exam,” he added.

But would you grade a teacher poorly because you did not do well for the mid term examinations?

“It depends,” says Rachel. “If my poor grades were a result of my teacher’s incompetence or my own laziness,” she says. “If it’s the latter then hell yeah I’ll rate the teacher negative!”

Asuka took a different stand. “If I did badly for the midterm exam, it’s my fault not the professor’s,” she says. “If I did badly for the midterm examination, I would look back and examine my paper to try and figure out what I did wrong,”

Memorable Feedbacks
A classmate once left a note in the feedback system for a Professor to remind him to wear his shoes during tutorials. He had this knack for taking off his shoes and walking around the carpeted floor bare-footed during class.

Another friend of mine slipped a “thank-you” attached to the end of her examination script. Perhaps that softened the teacher’s heart and prevented her from getting that B.

“The most memorable comment,” says Rachel, “was telling a Professor that he talks like a machine gun!”

Asuka was a little more kind. “(I) wrote a bit of comment for Professor Tagore,” she says. “I will always remember Professor Tagore’s module as being a life-changing experience that encouraged me to pursue philosophy further,”

The feedback system closes on 20th of November. Whatever comments that you will leave, don’t forget you will be getting extra CORS bidding points for it.

Reporting done by Christel Quek, Ruby Peng and Lester Lim.