Feedback and surveys

During the time of studies you will be solicited for many kinds of feedback. After orientation, new students will be asked to complete an orientation feedback questionnaire. In every course you take, you will be asked for course feedback.

The national Finnish Bachelor's Graduate Survey, for its part, gauges the satisfaction level of graduating Bachelor’s students with Aalto and other universities as well as their experiences how well the studies have gone. When you graduate with a Master’s degree, we ask you to fill in the TEK and the Finnish Business School Graduates questionnaire to hear your views concerning the degree and how well studies have gone and also to hear about your work. The career-tracking survey is a questionnaire that yields valuable data on how graduates are faring in the workplace.

As a student, you have the right to ask for feedback from your teacher when you would like to know how to get better results. You can for example ask for advice how you could have gotten a better grade. It is also important that you give feedback to the teachers by answering the questionnaires and sharing your experiences. Some courses have organized student agents who can gather information from students and bring it to the teacher during the course. Consequently, the teacher has a possibility to make changes during the course. With the help of the feedback, we can develop teaching and teaching environment.

Within one month, you will get personal feedback to your email address. The feedback will give you tips for personal development in following areas:

• your learning style and study strategies
• your self-efficacy and commitment
• do you see teaching well planned and aligned, interesting
• do you get enough feedback to support you studies
• do you get support from your peers
• how to deal with difficulties: procrastinating or re-evaluing the situation?
• are you able to be kind to yourself in stressful situations

You will get ideas of the feedback of yours strengths and developmental areas. You will also get tips where you find support for your personal development. Your feedback is confidential, but you can show it to your academic tutor or study coordinator if you wish to talk about it. You can also show it to study psychologist. The study psychologist team is organizing workshops about study skills, stress handling and dealing with difficult emotions.

The summaries of the results regarding each programme will be delivered to the Programme Managers. Together with the course feedback the results will be used for developing the programmes.

All Aalto schools collect course feedback automatically on all courses at the end of the course. The course feedback system creates feedback surveys and emails the students a link to respond. In some cases the teacher of the course may share the link on the website of the course, for example. When the survey has closed and if a minimum of 5 students have answered, the teacher gets a feedback report in her e-mail. In addition, summary reports for the leadership are created twice a year. 

More information: kurssipalaute.aalto.fi

Contact address: [email protected]

This survey concerns how students are faring with their studies in their second and fourth year. The survey will be carried for the first time in 2017. About one month after filling in the questionnaire, students will receive reciprocal feedback, followed by campus events where they can discuss it. Degree programme directors will also be informed of the questionnaire results. The questionnaire consists of parts taken from the HowULearn survey of the University of Helsinki and rounded off with supplementary questions.

For more information, see: https://into.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=24317460

The Finnish Bachelor’s Graduate Survey is a national student feedback survey. The objective of the questionnaire is to yield information on teaching and learning in different disciplines, and to form as specific an idea as possible of students’ experiences and opinions of teaching and learning.

The survey is based on the HowULearn survey and the questions in the questionnaire are based on research on academic teaching and learning. There are no right or wrong answers. The results will only be examined statistically at the group level. Therefore, the information gathered on individual students will not be monitored or reported.

At the end of the survey there are some questions that were formulated together with the trade unions affiliated with your field of study. We hope that you will respond to these questions as well. The responses you give to these questions will be sent to the unions.

Responsibility for development and implementation of the questionnaire lies with Universities Finland UNIFI.

Aalto University will use the results of the survey to develop its operations. As of 2015, the Ministry of Education and Culture distributes annually 3% (approx. €50 million) of its university core funding based on this student feedback survey.

More information: https://kandipalaute.fi/fi (In Finnish)

Contact address: [email protected] 

Feedback survey of new graduates

Since 2011, Finnish universities and Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland (TEK) have conducted a survey of newly graduated Masters of Science in technology and architecture. The survey encompasses all Finnish university units that provide education in the technology field, reaching almost every recent graduate with an MSc (Tech) or architecture degree. Response rates have been high – the rate from the graduating class of 2015 was over 70%.Owing to the high response, the survey has yielded reliable comparative information about the quality of education in Finnish universities of technology.

The survey is also an inventory of the skill levels of those who will shape tomorrow’s world. It also tells about how well the study system is running, the experiences of alumni in the workplace, the current employment situation and the general level of satisfaction with the degrees alumni have completed. Survey results are put to use in TEK activities in a number of ways, for example, they are factored into education policies and the development of member services (incl. career advice and consultation on salary levels). The universities use the results in developing results-based indicators that are applied to the work of designing the curriculum and evaluating the quality of teaching.

For more on the survey, see: https://www.tek.fi/fi/uutishuone/tutkimukset/vastavalmistuneiden-palautekysely (in Finnish)

Contact person: TEK analyst Arttu Piri

Feedback survey for MSc (Econ & Bus Admin) graduates 

Aalto University School of Business and the Finnish Business School Graduates organisation gather feedback on study and employment matters from the graduating business students. The responses are handled confidentially and cannot be linked to individual respondents. The feedback given is used to assess university operations and development and to follow the employment rates and salary levels of graduates. 

A summary of survey results is available (in Finnish) from the Finnish Business School Graduates website: http://www.ekonomit.fi/vastavalmistuneiden-palaute

Additional information: Tanja Nurmi ([email protected])

Information on the careers of Masters and Doctoral graduates is monitored by universities in collaboration with the national career and recruitment services network Aarresaari. The monitoring has been conducted for ten years with the participation of almost every university in Finland. Master's and Bachelor’s degree alumni are surveyed five years after graduation, while the career placement of Doctoral alumni is reviewed two to three years after graduation.

The goal of the career tracking survey is to generate comprehensive data on the quality of employment of university graduates and on how well an academic education corresponds to the needs of the workplace. The results are used in the planning of teaching, in guidance work and in educational development.

For more information, see: https://www.aarresaari.net/career_monitoring

Feedback from Aalto students going on exchange or internship abroad is collected through application surveys, evaluation survey (BIZ) and exchange reports. 

Exchange reports can be found through the databases (Reports tab):

• Destination Database for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture
• Destination Database for the School of Business
• Destination Database for the schools of technology (CHEM, ELEC, ENG, SCI)

Instructions for writing the report: After the exchange | Aalto University

More information about exchange studies: Exchange destinations | Aalto University

Students participating in Erasmus exchange or internship are required to fill out an EU Survey after the exchange. This is an electronic feedback form that is sent automatically by the European Commission to all Erasmus students after their mobility period.