This post was co-authored by Kathy Egea, Ann Wilson and Alisa Percy
Our latest FFYE Forum saw the launch of the third TACT Hot Topic this year, focussed on Feedback and Assessment. During a packed session, we looked at some big ideas emerging from current research into feedback and assessment, heard from a panel of UTS students and shared examples of practice across faculties and specialisms.
Making community count
FFYE forums bring our community of academics, professional staff and students together to learn from each other, share perspectives and build connections. Our focus and passion are student transition, with forums drawing on practice and research.
To bring our diverse participants together as the session began, Lucy Allen from TD School ran a 10-minute ‘self-portrait’ icebreaker activity, using the annotate feature in Zoom to encourage a little creative energy and connection. Watch how the activity unfolded in practice, and download her slide template for the activity if you would like to try it yourself.
Making student input count
During the first part of the Forum, a panel of students from the UTS Student Hub joined us to share their experiences of feedback. Their views on what makes good feedback and comments about what they do with the feedback they receive were valued, as one attendee noted, “[the] students were very forthcoming. It was a rare opportunity to hear their perspectives of feedback.”
Students expressed particular appreciation for feedback that is consistent (e.g. over the course of a subject or semester) and constructive, pointing towards specific areas for attention and improvement. They want both rubrics and feedback to be clearly articulated, so that they can focus on how to do better, not on deciphering vague suggestions.
Ultimately, it was clear students valued feedback most when it was clearly linked to their goals, progression and professional practice. They also value it when feedback is framed positively and is encouraging.
Receiving weekly feedback in clinical practicals, both written and verbal, was helpful and allowed me to understand where improvements needed to be made e.g. recording results, time management. This allowed me to have sufficient time to practice these skills leading up to the practical exam.
Year 1 student, Masters of Orthoptics
? Watch the first part of the Forum and student panel
Making feedback count: designing for uptake
Building on themes raised during the student panel, Alisa Percy introduced the work of Carless & Winstone (2020), who explore the interplay between teacher and student feedback literacy. These authors highlight the importance of designing your assessment and feedback strategy to support students’ feedback uptake, develop their capacity for evaluative judgement, and use technology to facilitate timely and meaningful feedback.
Drawing on Designing Effective Feedback Processes in Higher Education: A Learning-focused Approach (Winstone & Carless, 2020), we looked more closely at four suggestions for assessment design to support student feedback uptake:
- Task series – students repeat the same task two or more times and use the feedback of one to feed-forward to the next (e.g. lab reports).
- Two-part tasks – students are assessed on a topic in one mode (e.g. oral presentation) and use feedback from that task to feed-forward to an assessment on the same topic in a different mode (e.g. written report).
- Draft-plus-rework – students prepare a draft and engage in peer review, for example, or receive feedback from AcaWriter, and use that feedback to prepare the final submission.
- Pre-task guidance – students are engaged in learning activities prior to submission (e.g. reviewing exemplars, critiquing the rubric, citation workshop, peer dialogue) that upskill them for the assignment they will be submitting.
Ann Wilson also introduced David Nicol’s work on ‘inner feedback‘, an approach which acknowledges students as architects of their own feedback and helps build students’ capacity to regulate their learning. The comparison opportunities improve student attainment and the range of feedback they generate without burdening the educator and give teachers better information about student-generated feedback.
The visual below shows examples of ‘comparators’ in different types of internal feedback generation (e.g. what will improve your grade; what good quality work is) which can be mapped alongside different types of external references such as rubrics, peer work and exemplars:
? Watch Alisa and Ann’s presentation on ‘Feedback as learning – theory and practice’
Making feedback count in practice
So how are we helping students generate their own internal feedback through opportunities for comparison? What are all the strategies we use? Discussion across breakout rooms offered an opportunity for attendees to share their own feedback practices and talk about aspects to change and to explore further.
Matt Padula, Yvonne Davilla, and Neela Griffiths concluded the session with a case study describing the feedback process they use to support student learning of critical and evaluative skills in academic writing in Proteomics, a first year subject in the Masters of Medical Biotechnology. Their blended learning materials design includes three pre-class interactive tutorials using H5P, and two writing workshops. Although the interactive tutorials were optional, 73% of the cohort participated. Evaluation showed that whilst not all students perceived an improved confidence in critical and evaluative writing skills, the overall assessment writing quality had improved by a grade from the previous year.
? Watch Matt Padula and Yvonne Davilla’s presentation on ‘Putting the ‘Pro’ into Proteomics’
Where to next?
Stay tuned for more Hot Topic events on feedback and assessment over coming weeks. We’d love to see you at these upcoming sessions:
- Warm, wise, and personalised: Designing feedback for supporting student learning (10 August)
- Co-constructing rubrics with your students: An experience from Alison McEwen (11 August)
- Online assessment and feedback in practice (17 August)
- Placemaking, pedagogies and practices: learning design and ePortfolios (18 August)
Don’t forget you can join the FFYE community on Teams, and find all the latest Hot Topic discussions, resources and events by self-joining the Hot Topics Teams space. All are welcome to join – please spread the word through your networks!
References and further reading
David Carless & Naomi Winstone (2020). Teacher feedback literacy and its interplay with student feedback literacy, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2020.1782372.
David Nicol (2020). The power of internal feedback: exploiting natural comparison processes, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2020.1823314.
Naomi Winstone & David Carless (2020). Designing Effective Feedback Processes in Higher Education: A Learning-focused Approach, Routledge, SRHE: London.
Feature image by Kwa Nguyen