The LOUISA team engaged with more students to validate earlier findings and ensure representation from a wider range of student groups

An initial round of research had been conducted with student interns in summer 2024 to understand the in-course assessment and feedback process for students at the University. Colleagues across all three Colleges analysed the findings, identified common problems for students and prioritised key themes, as explained in the previous blog post: 

User research with students to understand the assessment submission and feedback process in Learn 

These priorities were used to conduct a second round of student research to gather more information across a broader range of Colleges, Schools, study levels, online and on-campus students. 

The aims of this second round of research were: 

• To capture any more student actions in the current in-course assessment and feedback process that hadn’t been identified from previous interviews. 

• To learn more about the prioritised themes that were identified by the previous round of research. 

• To uncover any additional problems that students currently face with assessments and feedback that hadn’t been identified from previous interviews. 

• To speak to a more representative sample of the student population, who were not interns working at the University. 

By conducting this research, and combining it with previous findings, the LOUISA project can ensure that any proposed solutions are informed by students’ experiences and supported by up-to-date evidence. 

The UX Service conducted semi-structured interviews with students between December 2024 and February 2025

Members of the UX Service and LTW interviewed 15 student interns during individual sessions.  

The participant sample was selected from a group of students who had volunteered to share their experiences of in-course assessments. The sample prioritised equal representation from all three Colleges and was split as follows: 

• Five students from CMVM, five from CSE and five from CAHSS. 

• Nine students were Undergraduates and six were studying Postgraduate Taught programmes. 

• 14 students studying on campus and 1 studying online, due to a low number of responses from online students. However, the submission and feedback process in Learn should work in a similar way, regardless of whether the student attends lectures online or on campus. 

The benefits of running semi-structured interviews with students can also be found in the previous blog post above. 

Students may experience a range of problems when submitting their assessments and receiving feedback through Learn 

Notes were extracted from the interview transcripts, and colleagues from each College were asked to read through the notes and record any student problems that they noticed. They also grouped the problems into themes to identify where students commented on similar topics. 

The problems and groups identified by colleagues were summarised to produce a list of 13 problems that students may experience while submitting their assessments and receiving feedback and marks. These problems have been grouped under three categories:  

• Preparing for assessment. 

• Submitting and uploading work for assessment. 

• Reviewing feedback and marks. 

Preparing for assessment 

Problems for students: 

• Some students don’t always know when an assessment is due for their course, for example, there can be multiple deadlines for the same assessment, but only one due date is shown within the submission area. 

• Some students struggle to find the information they need for assessment. 

• Some students aren’t clear on how to achieve a good mark on their assignment, for example, they may not be aware that there is a markscheme available for their assessment. 

Submitting and uploading work for assessment 

Problems for students: 

• It can be a time-consuming process for some students to format their work and submit, for example, sometimes it is necessary to convert Word documents into PDFs, or vice versa, before submission. 

• Some students aren’t sure how to label and format assignments correctly, for example, formatting requirements are inconsistent across courses, so students need to remember whether to submit a cover sheet or not. 

• Some students are confused about where to submit their assignment. 

• Some students are worried about similarity scores. 

• Some students are anxious and confused about whether they have submitted their assignment or not. 

Reviewing feedback and marks 

Problems for students: 

• Some students spend time manually checking to see when their marks and feedback have been returned. For example, because some students don’t trust that notifications are issued as soon as marks are released. 

• Some students struggle to locate their feedback and marks, for both individual and group assessments. 

• Some students incorrectly receive late flags or zeros for assignments, which is very stressful. 

• Some students have difficulty reading feedback and have manual workarounds to view it. 

• Some students can’t use their feedback to improve their marks in the future. 

Working with University colleagues to prioritise and address students’ problems 

The next blog post will cover: 

• How three of these problems were identified as priorities for LOUISA to address. 

• Examples of some of the root causes behind these problems. 

• Next steps for the LOUISA project team and the User Experience team. 

Further links 

LOUISA Sharepoint (requires login) 

This post is the third part in a series of blog posts about LOUISA UX activities.  

Part 1: 

A UX strategy to improve the course assessment experience for staff and students 

Part 2: 

User research with students to understand the assessment submission and feedback process in Learn