Phil Race (Visiting Professor: Assessment, Learning and Teaching, Leeds Metropolitan University) will be attending the ATN Assessment conference and presenting a pre-conference workshop on November 19, focusing on Feedback.
Phil has also prepared a 5 big ideas for delegates to consider and discuss or, in Phil's words, "to stir things up" in relation to feedback. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.
Big Idea 1
Feed-forward is the lifeblood of successful learning.
We’ve probably always known this, but student evaluation shows that feedback to students is not working nearly as well as it needs to work. In particular, students need to be able to build on our feedback so that they can address it in their next element of work, and build on their strengths as well as address the deficiencies in their work. But they say they don’t get feedback fast enough, nor does it help them sort out well enough the things they don’t understand.
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2 comments:
Hi Phil
I agreed with you absolutely!
However, I think that a major reason feedback is not working or that students are frustrated with it is that students do not see the value in fixing an assignment where the door is already closed to an improved grade.
In an ideal world students should get a formative and then summative mark for their assignment and have more than one try at getting it right, then feedback could be worked into the teaching plan and the assessment. Feedback would then, I think, become a hot topic amongst students.
Susanna Carter
Learning Adviser UniSA City East Campus.
Hi Phil / Susanna,
As very few students seem to engage with learning objectives on subject or course documentation, they are handing in assignments without really understanding the subtlety of the requirements for assessment.
Also, even if the assessment criteria are issued in documentation they often tend to be less than explicit. Given that few students read them anyway, they are handing in work with an undefined or perhaps ill-defined target for their learning.
We are having some early successes engaging students in self assessment with some online software, against explicit criteria BEFORE they hand in the assignment.
This is probably a better example of FEED FORWARD. The interim approaches already mentioned tend to double the workload whereas getting the students to do it may actually reduce the workload due to more finely tuned submissions of work.
There is also evidence that students' self reflecting against criteria is already causing learning whether they get feedback from an academic or not.
Darrall Thompson
SL and Dir of T&L
School of Design
Uni of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
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