Feedback and Feed-forward

Chris Grant and Richard Farr

Contents

✤ Our least favourite activity

✤ Evidence of a problem

✤ Who reads their feedback?

✤ Why don’t students access their feedback?

✤ Feeding forward

✤ Discussion Points

What’s our least favouritepart of the job?

Evidence of a Problem✤ Winter and Dye (2004)... 46% of staff reported that more

than 20% of student work was uncollected by the end of a semester.

✤ Cohen and Spencer (1993)... “Although each paper received detailed comments, ranging from argumentation to spelling, over half of the students never picked up their papers ... That pile of uncollected papers was a sure sign of student alienation from their writing, and a frustrating disincentive for continuing to provide detailed feedback.”

✤ Pears et al (2013)... sought to minimise wasted effort associated with giving feedback, based on Biggs’ (1999) principles of constructive alignment.

✤ Blair et al (2013) identify late feedback as a common complaint.

But... who actually reads their feedback?

The ‘tick’ icon identifies students who have viewed their document since marking

Full student activity reports can also be viewed

Good students access their feedback... right?

Tutor’s comments in Grademark

Common Problems Seen in Students’ Work✤ Misunderstanding or misinterpretation – not addressing the

problem that was set

✤ Errors of emphasis – distribution of effort or proportion of words was different to what was sought: an “R.T.F.Q. error”

✤ Basic study skills problems (style, referencing, language, structure)

✤ Poor logic or contradictory

✤ Lack of supporting evidence

✤ Too descriptive, not critical and therefore inappropriate to level

The Paradox

✤ The biggest complaint is that feedback comes too slowly to be useful...

✤ ...but many students never look at the feedback we give them.

✤ It appears their interest ends at “What mark did I get?”

✤ What are marks for?

✤ What is feedback for?

Is feedback more than simply a justification?

✤ Rank students in rough order of competence.

✤ The main feedback is the grade.

✤ Beyond that... is feedback a pre-emptive strike against students complaining about their grade?

National Student Survey...

Whatever happened to cyclic learning?

(Kolb, 1984)

Two different views.What are you paying for?“a degree qualificatio

n”

“the opportunityto study”

✤ Wants feedback that can be applied in future work.

✤ Wants to get better over time.

✤ Passion for the subject.

✤ Wants a ‘good mark’.

✤ Less interested in activities that don’t count towards the final grade.

✤ Shallow, or strategic learning choices.

We don’t know why students don’t make use of feedback!

✤ Technical difficulties?

✤ Awareness?

✤ Too busy?

✤ Modularisation?

✤ Don’t understand feedback received?

✤ Don’t value feedback received?

✤ Don’t know how to do better?

✤ Elapsed time?

✤ Don’t care?

✤ Other reasons?

✤ A survey of students’ feelings about the feedback process was inconclusive.

Feed-forward✤ Why wait until mistakes have been made?

✤ Avoid disappointments; build confidence.

✤ Avoid misunderstandings.

✤ Address the limitations of the off-campus model in particular.

✤ Simplify the task of writing feedback, because less needs to be explained.

Feedingforward✤ Excerpt from a

briefing for studentsexplaining what issought...

✤ Explains the termsthat commonly occurwithin feedback.

✤ Why not circulate itwhen the assignmentis set?

✤ Not spoon-feeding! (author: Duncan Grant)

Feeding Forward...

A series of videos offered a discussion of what staff look for when grading student

work

Lessons Learned✤ Some of our weaker students don’t actually know how to

access their feedback.✤ A huge variety of feedback formats...

✤ Grademark (various options)✤ Physical marking on paper-based documents✤ MS Word attachment – standard departmental template✤ MS Word attachment – of the tutor’s own devising✤ Video feedback✤ Meeting with tutors

✤ Students don’t always understand that they’re getting feedback.

Workshop Discussion Points

✤ If much of the feedback we are currently providing goes to waste...

✤ ... and its creation gives rise to one of the major complaints (late feedback)...

✤ What else can be done?

✤ Faster, cheaper, better...?

Findings from the workshop✤ Since this presentation was the basis for a workshop, it invited discussion

rather than offering conclusions. Some aspects of that discussion were as follows:

✤ Several participants already practiced various forms of “feed forward”, finding that it improved student attainment and retention.

✤ Video feedback was of some interest.

✤ Plagiarism remained one of the major causes of failed assessments – despite students being ‘fed forward’ (i.e. invited to check their document for similarity in advance of submission).

✤ Use of standard elements such as templates and rubrics within Grademark permitted additional feedback and time-saving.

✤ One member of staff proposed that students should be invited to state the form in which they would like their feedback. For example, as a short meeting instead of in written form.

✤ More articles from Richard Farr can be found on Capacify, the Sustainable Supply Chain blog:

✤ http://capacify.wordpress.com

✤ On Twitter: @Capacified

References✤ Biggs, J. (1999) What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning, Higher

Education Research & Development, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 57–75

✤ Blair, A., Curtis, S., Goodwin, M. and Shields, S. (2013) What Feedback do Students Want? Politics, 33(1), 66-79.

✤ Cohen, A. J., and Spencer, J (1993) Using writing across the curriculum in economics: Is taking the plunge worth it? Journal of Economic Education, 24, No. 3, 219-229.

✤ Kolb D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall

✤ Pears, A., Harland, J., Hamilton, M. and Hadgraft, R. (2013) What is Feedback? Connecting Student Perceptions to Assessment Practices, Proc. 1st International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering, March 21st - 24th, Macao

✤ Winter, C., & Dye, V. (2004) An investigation into the reasons why students do not collect marked assignments and the accompanying feedback, CELT Learning and Teaching Projects 2003-4, University of Wolverhampton. Online available: wlv.openrepository.com/wlv/bitstream/2436/3780/1/An%20investigation%20pgs%20133-141.pdf (accessed 17/5/14)