Intelligent Feedback Systems in Higher Education - Why and How?

Abstract

Universities tend to think that they know their students very well, but in real life conditions, many aspects are being left out of the consideration. This paper has set the main focus on the Information and Communication Technology based feedback systems for collection and analysis of student feedback who are mainly studying engineering sciences about everyday student life issues (such as study content, teachers, class schedule, satisfaction rates, environment, accessibility of resources and other). In the paper, authors propose a model of student feedback system that could intelligently address the gap between what student wants and thinks - what higher education institutions know about their students. Authors also review current offerings of the systems and addresses feedback as a part of quality assurance and demand driven University actions. With simple, but intelligent solution it would be possible to easily obtain and work with the information about neglected courses, personalized schedules, student voting, extracurricular activities, student research and more. Author also elaborates on perspective of social innovation that comes in a shape of new organizational form, where quality, decisions, and activities are bound to the continuous feedback that gets collected from the students. This would help Universities all across the globe to establish indisputable evidence for their actions. Challenge here lies within the responsibility of students to give correct, precise, honest and timely feedback. Findings of the paper are based on the literature review as well as five international expert discussions executed in the period of 2015-2017 in five different countries.