Strathclyde Medal Award for Marketing academic 

Dr Michael Harker, Department of Marketing, has been presented with a Strathclyde Medal Award for his work on Feedback Kitchen, a tool he has created to reduce time pressures surrounding assessment processes. 

Medal Awards recognise individual staff or teams at Strathclyde who consistently demonstrate the University’s Values in their work and relationships.  

Michael received an individual staff medal for creating an easy to use, adaptable, and free tool that enhances quality whilst reducing the considerable burden of processes related to assessment. The tool partially automates these processes, and a conservative estimate of time saved per submission is five minutes, which is a significant amount of time when many class cohorts can measure more than 500 - the time saved for a single class alone can be equivalent to a working week or more.  

All of the functions are very easily user editable and just ten minutes training is sufficient, while a version for a new class can typically be produced in 30 minutes or less. Implementations across some of the biggest Business School classes have saved an estimated total of 700 hours of work, using conservative assumptions. 

Michael has been driven to exploit the benefits of his tool by implementing it into classes from Glasgow to the far side of the world. The pressures generated by assessment related work are common to most, if not all, HEIs globally. The tool has been adopted in Scotland, England and Wales, but also in France and New Zealand. Further adoptions are being discussed currently in Denmark, the US and Australia.  

Michael was one of seven individuals and seven teams who had their outstanding contributions to the University recognised at a Strathclyde Medals ceremony on August 18, hosted by Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen McArthur. 

 The ceremony, now in its twelfth year and held in The Barony, also saw five Principal’s Special awards given.   

Published: 24 September 2026