With reference to the article ‘Results delay saga leaves students apprehensive’ by Johann Agius (Education, The Sunday Times of Malta, March 2), the University of Malta would like to clarify the following points.

University of Malta students play a critical part in the evaluation, development and enhancement of the quality of their learning experience. To this end, feedback from students allows the University to evaluate how its service provision is viewed by them.

Students can only send in feedback forms for a particular study unit before their results are ready for publication. As soon as a faculty informs the appropriate office that results have been checked and ready for publication, the feedback on that particular unit is stopped and results are published. Feedback from students is only given to lecturers after the results are submitted.

Feedback periods can occasionally be extended if, for one reason or another, results have not yet been submitted or, although ready, have not yet been agreed upon by the relevant Board of Examiners.

The deadline for submission of results by lecturers is March 31, according to the Collective Agreement for Academic Staff.

Participation in student feedback is on an entirely voluntary basis. The system generates reminder e-mails for those students who have not submitted feedback. However, anonymity is guaranteed as, although students log in to the student management system with their names, the results are passed on to the lecturers anonymously.

Log-in data is kept completely separate from feedback data. The lecturer can see the feedback of a whole class but not the feedback of any named individual student.