7: Your feedback and concerns
Your feedback to us
We place great value on feedback from students on all aspects of your student experience and your feedback enables us to continually improve. There are many mechanisms for providing feedback, including the GSSLC, Advice and Feedback Hours, module evaluations, the Warwick Student Feedback Survey (SFS)Link opens in a new window in term 1 and term 3, the Postgraduate Taught Experience SurveyLink opens in a new window (PTES) in the Summer Term , department focus groups and the anonymous Departmental online feedback formLink opens in a new window. The University actively encourages feedbackLink opens in a new window on all aspects of the student experience.
Module evaluation
In the final weeks of Terms 1 and 2, we ask you to fill in an online evaluation for each of your Economics modules. This gives you the opportunity to express your views on various aspects of the module.
In order to improve our teaching and your learning, we need to identify problems and areas of best practice so we can mitigate/eliminate them or disseminate them, respectively. Your feedback is an essential part of this process. A summary of the module evaluation data and comments is shared with students. Senior management will also review them and consider suggestions for changes or improvement across our modules and teaching delivery.
We encourage you to be honest in your feedback, but you must also be respectful. Lecturers have feelings too. Try to distinguish between your reactions to your teacher's personality and their teaching. You can dislike someone, but still benefit from their teaching. The process of 'teaching and learning' requires participation by the teacher and you, so always ask yourself how much effort you put in, beyond attending lectures and classes when completing a module evaluation. It is important that a large number of students complete the module evaluation so that we have a representative sample of your feedback.
Annual Module review
At the end of Terms 1 and 2, module leaders review their module, commenting on the performance of the cohort, any changes introduced that year and proposed for next year, any module specific GSSLC issues, and the data and comments from the Module Evaluation. A summary of this is shared with students. Reports are considered by the Director of Graduate Studies (Taught Degrees), who summarises key points and presents them to the Graduate Management Committee. This identifies causes for concern, suggests action to overcome problems, and monitors trends from year to year. This process is one way in which we monitor the quality and standards of our degree courses.
Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey
The Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) is conducted annually and is a survey of taught postgraduate students in all UK universities about their learning and teaching experience.
PTES allows us to get honest feedback from you on what we do well and what we could improve further to be able to maintain our reputation as one of the top economics departments globally. Find out about the feedback we have acted upon, from the PTES and other feedback, and how we have worked together to implement some real improvements to your teaching and learning experience hereLink opens in a new window.
We would encourage all students to take part in the PTES survey. In previous years the department made a charitable donation (for each response received) to a charity voted for by the student cohort. There was also a prize draw for all students, triggered once the target response rate was reached. For more information about this survey please visit the department's PTES webpageLink opens in a new window.
Following analysis of the results of PTES, the department develops an action plan based on the students' response, which informs development of policy and procedures in the postgraduate area.
What is a complaint?
We want you to be able to let us know when things are going well, but also if there is a problem that you don't feel you can resolve yourself. We encourage you to raise any issues with the member of staff concerned or to email economics.quality@warwick.ac.uk. Link opens in a new window
If that doesn't resolve your issue, we have a clear procedure which sets out how you can make a complaintLink opens in a new window. The department follows the University's three-stage Student Complaints Resolution ProcedureLink opens in a new window and you should consult this website for more information about each stage.
If the above procedure does not led to a satisfactory outcome, under certain criteria, you can refer your complaint to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA)Link opens in a new window within twelve months of the date of the Completion of Procedures Letter from the University.