Students' feedback in mid-term surveys: an explorative contribution in the Italian university context

This article focuses on the role of student feedback in the process of higher education quality assurance. The most recent reforms of the educational systems encourage teachers to enlarge their educational paradigm by experimenting with assessment practices that would go behind accountability and be more responsive to students' learning needs. In Italy, despite the widespread acknowledgment of the role played by students' feedback in providing information about the outputs of their education, the quality assurance process has remained, thus far, largely unchanged. Student compliance with rather traditional academic teaching practices and a diffused sense of uselessness of the results coming from end-course surveys represent increasing malpractices in the Italian quality assurance system. In view of the above, the article reports an explorative study aimed to develop a mid-term survey for student feedback. Implications for future research are discussed.