Students' feedback of teaching: Why the differences in responses?

It is well known that feedback plays an essential role in students' learning processes and assessment practises. Similarly feedback from students is important to instructors wanting to improve their teaching. Curtin's online survey instrument named "eVALUate", is designed to gather feedback from students about their perceptions of their learning experiences. It is assumed that after one semester students would have a very good idea about their learning experiences, unit learning outcomes and teaching quality. However, our data reveals that students show a wide range of responses to some of the survey items, although they were exposed to the same learning environment and instructor. It appears that students have differing interpretations of the meanings of items in the survey instrument. This presentation will discuss such variations in students' perception of items of the survey instrument, and possible reasons about why they occur