The need for a more creative approach to evaluation

Collecting student evaluations are a feature of policy and practice within Higher Education (HE) in England and across the world. This article introduces a new way to capture undergraduate’s evaluation of their learning experiences through writing a story. The expected outcomes of student feedback are: to improve and develop teaching, to understand the current educational attainment of students, for quality assurance and human resources purposes (Hoon, Oliver, Szpakowska, & Newton, 2015; Seale, 2010; Stein Spiller, Terry, Harris, Deaker, & Kennedy, 2013). Currently the most popular way to capture this feedback is through questionnaires such as Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) and the national student survey (NSS) that not only inform current practice but also impact on the overall ranking of the institution (Ashwin, 2017; Lenton, 2015). This is more pertinent since the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which grades a university’s standard of teaching as Bronze, Silver or Gold and the withdrawal of the student number cap which have led to the sector becoming more marketised.