Making Feedback a positive learning experience Joint Academy/NUS Special Interest Group Professor Brenda Smith Senior Associate [email protected].

Making Feedback a positive learning

experience

Making Feedback a positive learning

experienceJoint Academy/NUS Special Interest Group

Professor Brenda SmithSenior Associate

[email protected]

Joint Academy/NUS Special Interest Group

Professor Brenda SmithSenior Associate

[email protected]

Aims to...

Emphasis assessment for learning rather than of learning

Encourage the active engagement of students in the whole process of assessment and feedback

Value the importance of getting to know your students

Issues with assessment?

Students are often not given the ‘Big Picture’ - students want an ‘e-bay’ experience

Too much summative and not enough formative

Students are not actively involved in the whole process

Insufficient feedback that comes too late

Myths and traditions that inhibit change

Variations in practice

The whole assessment process needs clear and effective leadership and management

What students would like

Assessment methods can affect the type

and usefulness of the feedback

given

University of Hertfordshire

Conditions for innovation & enhancement

Effective leadership of learning, teaching & assessment

Departments that value teaching

Workloads that are not too high

Perceived recognition & rewards for staff

Developments that are implemented in a student focused way

A culture that listens to students and values their feedback

Tutors that get to know their students personally

Students want more feedback. The also want more verbal and face-to-face feedback.

What can we stop doing to enable this to happen?

Why did I get 37% ?

Questions.....?Is written feedback always typed?

Do staff encourage the use of self and peer feedback?

Is feedback given in different ways e.g. MP3, Audacity etc

Are students actively encouraged to use feedback?

Evaluation of Tutor feedback

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ission

Use

of E

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Ask fo

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catio

n

Erro

r

Giv

e cla

rifica

tion

Pra

ise

En

cou

rag

em

en

t

Feed

forw

ard

-ive

30%

20%

17%

11.5%

10.5%

3.1%

1.5%

0% 0%

OU/SHU Improving the Effectiveness of Formative Assessment in Science

Students comments

They are not very specific when they mark. I got “some good evaluation”, what does that mean?

You put so much effort into this work that you really want feedback and to know they have read it properly. If you just get a mark you think, “I’ve worked for days and that’s it?”

I think it would be helpful as well if when we had our feedback we could relate it to the assessment criteria

Get students confident with assessing

Give students in groups a selection of essays - Excellent, Good, Average & Fail

Students decide individually which essay fits into which category and then compares notes in small groups

Then get students to tease out the differences & express these differences as criteria

Students then provide feedback on each piece of work in their groups

Students then provide guidelines for effective essay writing

What has each student/group learned?

Get students actively involvedIn small groups get students to exchange an assessed piece of their work and compare the feedback comments with group members

Do they understand the comments?

How would they respond to the comments?

What would they do differently next time if:

a) They re-did the same assignment

b) Applied the learning to a new and different piece of work?

Quick ways of giving feedback

Generic feedback within 24 hours on the VLE

Face-to-face feedback with the whole group or small groups

Peer feedback in groups

Use technology - Audacity, Dragon, Statement Banks

Self-feedback - help students develop the skills of self reflection

Understanding...?

This report is not logically structured

This essay is not sufficiently analytical

We need to develop the skills of self- assessment & encourage students to be active in this process

Involve the students

Student Staff

These are areas of my work which I think are good

Please comment on the following areas

What I want to improve or do differently next time

The mark I think it deserves is

REf. Race, P (2007), Adapted from ‘How to Get a Good Degree: 2nd edition’, London: Open University Press

Dialogue Starters...How did this essay make you think differently?

Which of your references gave you the best information?

Which part of the assignment do you feel less confident about?

What was the most challenging part of this assignment?

Jot down 2 things you have learnt doing this assignment that you did not expect to learn?

What advice would you give to students doing this assignment?

If you were to do this assignment again, what one change would you make?

Any Questions?

Professor Brenda SmithSenior Associate, Higher Education Academy

[email protected]