There is one more point I want to make to anyone looking in on this debate. Ask anyone from across the sector and they will tell you how hard it is to get students actually to fill in feedback forms. We basically keep ours in the seminar room at the end of the course for the last 15 minutes to fill them in while the lecturer leaves the room. A student collects them in, puts them in a sealed envelope and hands that in at the departmental office. Otherwise, when left up to the students themselves, feedback returns are as low as 25%. So the claims of the student commenters on Bill Cooke's piece indignantly demanding their right to review are as empty as the claims for more contact hours by students who don't turn up, or adequately prepare for, the hours they do have.
What people like that want - and what RYL will fundamentally only be used to provide - is simply a forum for cowardly, anonymous (but public) score-settling by the puerile and petty-minded. If that isn't the case why are so many students so unwilling to fill in the review forms they are freely given?
