Your Voice, Your Classroom | Why Student Feedback Shapes How You Are Taught
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SU Student Success Initiative Series: Episode Eight.
Recorded on Tuesday 15 September 2026.
Be honest. When last did you fill in a module feedback survey properly, and did you ever find out whether anyone read it? Most students click submit and assume it disappears into a drawer. This conversation is about what actually happens next, and about the difference between being an evaluator and being a partner.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the eighth of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by Dr Melanie Petersen, Programme Manager for Student Access and Success; Dr Gert Young, Higher Education Adviser at the Centre for Teaching and Learning; Prof Deborah Blaine, Associate Professor in Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering; Prof Hermann Swart, Associate Professor in Psychology; and Tyrese Human, a BEd student in Foundation Phase Teaching and outgoing chairperson of the Academic Affairs Council.
What we cover in this episode:
- Where feedback sits in the bigger picture: Dr Petersen on whether student feedback genuinely drives student success or merely reports on it, what a coherent approach looks like across faculties that each do things their own way, and the one small practical thing students could change to make their feedback more useful.
- What happens after you click submit: Dr Young manages the institutional feedback system and traces the path from a completed survey to a change in a classroom. He also addresses how you know whether a change made in response to feedback actually worked.
- Contradictory feedback: Lecturers describe a split between diligent, positive respondents and disgruntled ones venting. Dr Young explains how that gets read at institutional level, and what meaningful reform of the system would look like.
- Feedback as an ongoing dialogue: Prof Swart rejects the once-off survey model and describes what a week-to-week conversation looks like in his classroom. He also explains closing the loop - telling each new cohort what the previous group raised and what changed because of it.
- Trust and psychological safety: How you build the conditions where students will say what they actually think, and why taking feedback seriously does not mean acting on every suggestion. Student satisfaction, Prof Swart notes, is not the same thing as teaching quality.
- Feedback fatigue: Prof Blaine describes what survey burnout looks like on the ground, particularly in Engineering, where students may complete surveys for ten to fifteen lecturers in a single semester. She floats a single once-a-semester form covering all a student's modules, and confronts the risk it carries — that some lecturers would rarely hear from students at all.
- Where honest feedback really lives: Tyrese argues that WhatsApp groups, corridor conversations and committee meetings often carry more truth than official channels, and names the biggest gap he saw between what students were saying and what the institution was hearing.
- From evaluators to partners: If a student spots a real problem in a module, is the pathway to raise it actually clear, and whose job is it to make it clearer? Tyrese makes the case for students sitting alongside staff to design solutions rather than being consulted after the fact.
Where to find support:
SU website: https://www.su.ac.za/en/students/success
Or from the SU homepage, click Students, then Support, then Student Success.
Recorded on Tuesday 15 September 2026.
Be honest. When last did you fill in a module feedback survey properly, and did you ever find out whether anyone read it? Most students click submit and assume it disappears into a drawer. This conversation is about what actually happens next, and about the difference between being an evaluator and being a partner.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the eighth of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by Dr Melanie Petersen, Programme Manager for Student Access and Success; Dr Gert Young, Higher Education Adviser at the Centre for Teaching and Learning; Prof Deborah Blaine, Associate Professor in Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering; Prof Hermann Swart, Associate Professor in Psychology; and Tyrese Human, a BEd student in Foundation Phase Teaching and outgoing chairperson of the Academic Affairs Council.
What we cover in this episode:
- Where feedback sits in the bigger picture: Dr Petersen on whether student feedback genuinely drives student success or merely reports on it, what a coherent approach looks like across faculties that each do things their own way, and the one small practical thing students could change to make their feedback more useful.
- What happens after you click submit: Dr Young manages the institutional feedback system and traces the path from a completed survey to a change in a classroom. He also addresses how you know whether a change made in response to feedback actually worked.
- Contradictory feedback: Lecturers describe a split between diligent, positive respondents and disgruntled ones venting. Dr Young explains how that gets read at institutional level, and what meaningful reform of the system would look like.
- Feedback as an ongoing dialogue: Prof Swart rejects the once-off survey model and describes what a week-to-week conversation looks like in his classroom. He also explains closing the loop - telling each new cohort what the previous group raised and what changed because of it.
- Trust and psychological safety: How you build the conditions where students will say what they actually think, and why taking feedback seriously does not mean acting on every suggestion. Student satisfaction, Prof Swart notes, is not the same thing as teaching quality.
- Feedback fatigue: Prof Blaine describes what survey burnout looks like on the ground, particularly in Engineering, where students may complete surveys for ten to fifteen lecturers in a single semester. She floats a single once-a-semester form covering all a student's modules, and confronts the risk it carries — that some lecturers would rarely hear from students at all.
- Where honest feedback really lives: Tyrese argues that WhatsApp groups, corridor conversations and committee meetings often carry more truth than official channels, and names the biggest gap he saw between what students were saying and what the institution was hearing.
- From evaluators to partners: If a student spots a real problem in a module, is the pathway to raise it actually clear, and whose job is it to make it clearer? Tyrese makes the case for students sitting alongside staff to design solutions rather than being consulted after the fact.
Where to find support:
SU website: https://www.su.ac.za/en/students/success
Or from the SU homepage, click Students, then Support, then Student Success.
