At this year’s Secret Life of Students, I suggested that module evaluation should be mandatory. I got several raised eyebrows.
When it comes to module evaluation questionnaires, most UK universities find themselves trapped in a perpetual cycle of diminishing returns – offering Amazon vouchers, laptop prizes, or increasingly desperate pleas to students who have long since tuned out the barrage of automated emails.
But what if the solution isn’t better incentives, but a fundamentally different approach to the relationship between students, feedback, and institutional improvement?
The example I often give is from the University of Tartu in Estonia – who make student feedback not encouraged but required.
Radical transparency
Estonia is a country where transparency matters – and to pass a module, students must complete feedback on the teaching.
The rationale when that was introduced was reciprocal – students demanded detailed feedback on their own work, so why shouldn’t they provide the same courtesy to their staff?
At first they made all evaluation results publicly available – including the unredacted, anonymised free text comments.
The logic was that transparency breeds accountability, and students needed to see the full feedback loop – what was being said and, crucially, what was being done about it. That was supposed to transform module evaluation from a bureaucratic exercise into a genuine partnership for improvement.
Until it didn’t.
In 2018, student Henry-Laur Allik used the system to post this:
Avoid this class like the plague. If you dare take this class, then know that what awaits you is the teacher with the worst behaviour in the journalism program. She does everything she can to ensure that you will not enjoy this class. Even the biggest history fans clutch at their heads. God help you! She did everything she could to ensure that the students feel bad.”
The comment, though anonymous within the system, went viral. The lecturer – accused of being confrontational, demeaning, breaking promises and publicly shaming students – then used Estonia’s data protection legislation to secure a court injunction requiring the university to reveal the commenter’s identity.
The university was then in a pickle – abandon the system or evolve it?
A culture of constructive critique
Rather than reverting to the kind of risk-averse, sanitised systems common in the UK, the university engaged in detailed negotiations with its 30 institute-level student councils.
These councils – who used the rich feedback data to identify trends and systematic issues – fought to preserve the system’s essence while addressing its vulnerabilities.
The resulting compromise maintained public disclosure of results and institutional responses, but with anonymous comments now summarised rather than published verbatim.
Students receive guidance on providing constructive feedback, and there are clearer pathways for raising misconduct allegations through the right channels.
Beyond tickboxes
What makes the Estonian approach particularly compelling is its recognition that providing feedback isn’t just about improving courses – it’s about developing students’ own reflective capabilities.
The requirement to complete surveys is an opportunity for students to assess their own engagement and independent study habits.
The revised system, introduced from spring 2019, explicitly acknowledges that dual purpose:
The course feedback questionnaire applied at the University of Tartu from the spring semester of 2019 is primarily meant for the teaching staff for the development of their courses. The questionnaire enables them to get feedback on the students’ learning experience during the whole course.
Structuring feedback around the fundamental principles of educational development – engagement, constructivism, and motivation – means Tartu transforms module evaluation from a customer satisfaction exercise into a learning experience in its own right.
Architecture of engagement
The system is built on Lawson & Lawson’s model of active learning, which positions student engagement as the crucial mediator between teaching quality and learning outcomes. That foundation manifests in a three-part questionnaire structure that examines:
- Teaching of the course — Including structure, online activities, variety of methods, opportunities for discussion, intellectual challenge, quality of feedback, and assessment alignment
- Student learning — Focusing on time devoted to learning, preparation, active involvement, and interest development
- Results of learning — Assessing the perceived value of the course to the learner
It explicitly acknowledges that learning outcomes emerge from the interaction between teaching quality and student engagement – a useful way of looking at things when compared to systems that implicitly assume poor outcomes can only stem from teaching deficiencies.
At the end of the questionnaire, respondents can give recommendations to future students. Not only is that useful for other students, lecturers get additional information about how the learners understood the course and the teaching (e.g., the course seemed simple, or something in the teaching was not supportive of learning, etc.).
Summaries of what’s been learned then are published, and staff have to make clear in module descriptions actions taken as a result – so the feedback loop is closed, but not for the individual student – it’s paid forward, like an endless loop.
From feedback to governance
That approach to feedback then feeds into broader structures of student representation. Normalising feedback as a universal, expected component of the educational experience rather than an optional extra, the university creates a helpful pool of data and evidence that student representative structures can then use to analyse, work on, highlight themes and so on – all grounded in students’ lived experiences.
Each faculty has a student council (Valdkonna Üliõpilaskogu – VÜK) with dedicated “Study Quality Specialists” who have complete access to feedback data through the university’s information system. They take part in academic committees, engage with the university-wide student union’s quality working group, and organise events focused on improving educational experiences.
That integration extends to staff assessment, where student representatives on evaluation committees review feedback before formulating questions and observations about teaching performance. The result is a representation system that feels significantly more sophisticated in its policy influence – precisely because it’s grounded in universal data rather than the anecdotal experiences of the engaged few.
At the department level, Institute Student Councils (Instituudi Üliõpilaskogu – IÜK) operate with 3-5 student members per “academic institute” (ie school). These form the backbone of the grassroots representation system, where student concerns are first captured and addressed.
Student reps constitute 20% of each institute council with full voting rights – ensuring student voice is embedded in departmental governance rather than merely consulted. They attend institute meetings, appoint student representatives to curriculum committees, and implement faculty-level initiatives at the programme level.
You’ll note that in comparison to UK systems, this is a group of students that work together on issues, rather than individual reps all supported by a central rep coordinator. There’s also far fewer of them than we’d see theoretically in the UK – and so both the faculty councils and the school ones can all fit in a room, and collectively form the SU’s council.
Challenges and contradictions
The Tartu model does not represent educational utopia. The system acknowledges inherent tensions, noting that “as the prior knowledge, study skills and expectations of the learners are different, it is natural that the comments may be contradictory.”
Staff are advised to focus on actionable feedback rather than attempting to satisfy contradictory demands.
Likewise, the system recognises that engagement isn’t solely determined by teaching quality:
When interpreting the ratings given to this part, it should be considered that students’ engagement does not depend on themselves only, but the learning environment shaped by the lecturer is also influential. Still, lower ratings may not always be related to the activities of the lecturer: the group may have included students whose personality factors or personal interests prevailed over the lecturer’s activities.”
The approach – which acknowledges that neither students nor staff bear sole responsibility for educational outcomes – creates space for genuine partnership rather than adversarial finger-pointing.
Lessons from Estonia
Making feedback mandatory needn’t be experienced as oppressive if it forms part of a genuine commitment to educational partnership. Students at Tartu don’t complete surveys because they’re chasing Amazon vouchers – they do so because feedback has been normalised as part of what it means to be an engaged learner.
Transparency – even with appropriate guardrails against abuse – builds trust. When students can see not just aggregated satisfaction metrics but concrete actions taken in response to their concerns, the feedback loop feels meaningful rather than performative.
Student representation works most effectively when built upon universal engagement rather than the activism of the few. Representatives who can access comprehensive feedback data can identify systemic issues that might otherwise remain invisible, and speak with authority about students’ collective experiences rather than relying on anecdote. It moves reps from gatherers of feedback that is often critiqued for its credibility to active partners working on, analysing and synthesizing issues – as well as problem solving them.
The Tartu model isn’t perfect. But in an era when UK institutions increasingly treat student feedback as a marketing exercise rather than an educational one, its emphasis on partnership, transparency and universal engagement is a compelling alternative – one that treats student voice not as a customer satisfaction metric, but as a fundamental component of education itself.
