Response to Student Feedback
HSTY2673 Lived Experience in Modern China (2011)

Unit Coordinator: Professor Helen Dunstan

The first thing to say is “thank you” to the 51 percent of you who turned up to fill out the USE questionnaires. Your feedback is essential and, as I hope to show below, is taken very seriously. In fact, most of you seem to have appreciated this unit of study: 89% of you agreed or strongly agreed that you were with “satisfied with the quality of this unit of study” overall, and the mean overall satisfaction “score” was 4.18 (out of 5). The “bottom-up” approach was a big hit with most of you, most of you found the readings rewarding and the tutorial discussions stimulating and eye-opening, and there were even kind remarks about my lectures. Most heart-warming of all, some of you noticed that I really had been working hard for you and commented on the specific ways in which this had helped you.

It seems from the “scores” that the area on which I have to work hardest next time I teach this unit of study is the assessment: for the question “The assessment in this unit of study allowed me to demonstrate what I had understood,” only 66% of you agreed or strongly agreed, while 26% were “neutral,” and the mean score was only 3.71. There is certainly one option for the first essay that needs to be rethought, which I will do. Other things I shall be thinking about include the indications that not all students found me approachable or felt that they had easy access to me, the desire of some students for a greater admixture of cheerful subject matter, and suggestions that there should be more discussion of the relationship between individual case studies and the “big picture.” I will take all this on board for the benefit of future students, and I am particularly sorry that I didn’t manage to convey to everyone that I really was happy to meet with you, and would have responded gladly to any e-mails you might have sent me with the same kind of careful, substantive answers that I gave your classmates.