By presenting the last-cohort’s feedback we role model that we value students’ evaluations. We show them their views matter to us. As well as ‘you said we did’ we should include ‘you said we didn’t’ then explain the rationale. This may pre-empt students identifying the same problems (and of course if we can’t provide a rationale it may be we do indeed need to respond positively to that feedback). We may decide to do this before the module starts or early on in the module.

Example: Mary included two slides in the introduction to her masters in education programme – one ‘you said we did’, the other ‘you said we didn’t’, then talked through the rationale to all comments. Students fed back that they hadn’t seen this done at the start of a programme before but felt they would now be more likely to feed back comments on the programme.