1. Feedback to students Rosalind Duhs Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT) This document is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/.
15. Embed feedback and promote student understanding of how work is assessed Figure: Berry O’Donovan & Chris Rust ASKe Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, (Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange) Oxford Brookes University
This short session provides staff with ways of helping students to learn from feedback and recognise the many forms feedback can take.
These session learning outcomes also serve as an outline for the session.
We normally consider feedback in narrow terms. It is a one-way process – from tutor to student - and it happens once in the form of written comments on written work. Feedback is usually provided on finished work when it is too late to improve. Sometimes feedback is provided so late that it cannot be used to enhance the standard of the next piece of work.
A feedback dialogue provides multiple opportunities for learning and the chance for learners to develop a clearer picture of what they need to do to improve and produce better work.
This slide shows how the definition of feedback can be broadened. The tutor or lecturer does not need to be the only source of feedback.
Students often have no idea how they will get feedback and how they can use it to learn. Awareness of what to expect is helpful.
This is standard practice. The tutor writes feedback for the students. Students often just look at their mark and if it’s ok they may not even read the feedback comments. Instead, they need to study feedback and consider how to learn from it and act on it to improve the standard of their work.
This feedback pattern offers multiple opportunities for learning and gets students to engage with work early on in advance of deadlines. The virtual learning environment can be used for feedback on early drafts. Students can be put into small feedback groups, as diverse as possible. They benefit greatly from collaborative learning.
This animated slide illustrates multiple iterations of feedback and reflection on feedback. The most important arrow is probably the thick one on the left which goes from the student to the student and underlines the centrality of considering feedback and making an effort to learn from it.
The dialogic feedback system puts the student at the centre, not the teacher. Students consider their own work, the work of peers, and engage in a feedback dialogue with tutors.
All these benefits accrue from working with a dialogic feedback system.
This slide shows how the dialogic feedback system mirrors the way academic staff work in many disciplines when they submit an article to a journal. They would never dream of starting the article a few days before submission and they would seldom expect to get it published at once.
With thanks to Berry O’Donovan and Chris Rust for permission to use their figure. They have provided students with assessment criteria and given them the opportunity to mark each others’ work applying the criteria. Students’ performance has improved as a result. They understand what is required and engage actively with feedback before the next iteration begins.
This slide concludes the section on assessment criteria and related exemplars. The use of exemplars is helpful because when students are required to critique or analyse, they may not know what that entails. Asking them to draw on texts and identify the characteristics of a critique or an analysis will help them to develop the abilities they need to master.
It is vital to explain that timely means in time to use the feedback to learn and produce better work next time.
It is not enough to write comments. They need to be useful to students so they need to be comprehensible.
This practical advice centres on providing feedback which leaves students with a sense of empowerment. In this context, empowerment comes from the perception that it is possible to do better. Even if student work is of a high standard, students need to know why they did well so they can continue to work in ways which reflect their profound insights. If work is of a low standard, students need to know that they can do better if they adopt a deep approach to learning and focus on developing specific areas, a few at a time.
These pieces of advice also build on the notion of ‘feedforward’ or comments on work which can be used for future development.
Referencing can be difficult. Students may not understand that they are plagiarising and may need support in this area.
Time can often be saved by using quizzes with embedded feedback. These work well. Often students find the same areas challenging so some explanations do not have to be individual, but can be shared by the whole group.
![Seminar intended learning outcomes ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)