Quantifiable feedback: can it really measure quality?

Abstract

This report is an investigation into how the Department of Hotel Catering and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Technical College (Chai Wan) responded to a policy decision of the Vocational Training Council (VTC) to obtain quantifiable student feedback on each course unit, and to grade each unit on a five‐point scale. It considers how the management of the department made policy decisions that would enable them to meet the VTC requirements, but would also provide data from which it would be possible to identify areas for improvement. Data were collected from several sources including: the VTC academic quality policy; meetings with the head of department, the course leader for the hotel and catering higher diploma, and the principal lecturer responsible for the department’s quality policy; feedback from staff and students. The report concludes that there is merit in such a process, but that to focus on the numerical value of a unit as an indicator of quality is to ignore the detail that is involved. The reflections on the quality achieved, and how to improve it, are of more value to the teaching team and the students than the VTC requirements for a single grade.

Citation

Richardson, K.E. (1998), "Quantifiable feedback: can it really measure quality?", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 212-219. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684889810242218