Feedback-based Learning Through Online Feedback Systems in Higher Education

From scientific research it is known that feedback from students to lecturers can positively influence teaching and learning in higher education. This involves both responses concerning the quality of teaching and to students' learning process. In courses with a large number of students it is challenging to receive individual feedback from all students, using the traditional method of oral feedback. One possible way is to use online feedback-systems. Through this, all students have the opportunity to express their opinion, requests or problems concerning the lecture in anonymous way, at any time. Furthermore, it allows the results to be discussed together in class. The paper deals with the issue of student feedback in higher education and presents an online feedback-system and its integration into the teaching process. In addition, the paper shows some empirical based experiences made with the feedback-system in three courses in a German University of Applied Sciences. It becomes visible that feedback-systems have the potential to improve the quality of teaching and make learning more interactive and student-oriented.