Energizing Feedback: Empowering students’ to recognise, own and use feedback

1. Energizing Feedback: Empowering students’ to recognise, own and use feedback Dr. Cathy Minett-Smith Associate Dean Student Experience University of Bedfordshire Business School June 2015

2. Outline • Introduction to the context and project • Key findings to date • The process of feedback • Thresholds in feedback • Future directions

3. Introduction • Project initiated in 2009, partly in response to low NSS scores relating to assessment and feedback. • Extensive work had been done on academic practice, decision taken to explore the issue through the lens of student experience. • Project extended to University of Bedfordshire.

4. Wider context Focus on assessment (and feedback)

5. Assessment defines what the students regard as important, how they spend their time and how they come to see themselves as students and then graduates. Brown and Knight 1994 Assessment is the engine which drives student learning John Cowan (2005) Our feedback is the oil which can lubricate this engine. Phil Race (2002)

6. Focus initially targeted at academic practice, getting the tutor designed mechanics of assessment right. ‘I’d like to take you through some tough thinking about assessment, and encourage you to play your part in working towards fixing it.’ Phil Race (2002) Focus shifting to student engagement, learning communities. ‘Although there have been several calls for educational professionals to have a better understanding of assessment, this misses out the other partner in assessment – the student.’ Price et al (2012)

7. Stakeholder expectations • High impact of satisfaction surveys in league tables etc • Hearing the student voice, students as co-producers • Student evaluation of the learning process. Equipping them to be effective?

8. Action Research Methodology: Focus enhancing and improving practice What’s Feedback Resource What do students understand about feedback? 1. Focus Groups: Middlesex

9. Generic Reports from past assessments Oral feedback In Lectures Immediate answers to questions 1:1 support or feedback on draft work Tutors’ Feedback/Office Hours In Seminars FEEDBACK IS THERE IN MANY FORMS ALL THE TIME ARE YOU MAKING THE MOST OF IT? tutorials Discussion Board posts Model answers Model solutions Student responses Discussion of seminar activities Mock tests Test bank answers Verbal responses to your answers Written comments Feedback you give to each other through group work Grade Book comments from tutors From your peers in class Via recorded Podcasts Review of your exam script Interactions with tutors during breaks

10. Action Research Methodology: Focus enhancing and improving practice Practical solution to the challenge What’s Feedback Resource What do students understand about feedback? Resource evaluated with staff and students What voices are credible in feedback? What would help students use feedback? Resource Updated 1. Focus Groups: Middlesex 2. Middlesex 3. Focus Groups: Bedfordshire and Middlesex 5. Focus Groups: Bedfordshire Student resources produced: Digital Stories Sector confirmation/consensus 4. Workshop: HEA Conference 6. Second staff workshop

11. Key Findings Lack of recognition of different forms of feedback. Lack of action on feedback Challenge for the sector

12. Credible Voices

13. Credible Voices • Staff • Challenge of multiple markers • Students – useful but not reliable • Self – lack of confidence • Linked to a task.

14. Relationships • Feedback comes from someone • Part of a dialogue • Personalised • Trust important • Immediacy • Historical perspective • Online – needs confirmation from someone.

15. Feedback: Full stop? Received

16. Challenge! • Emphasis to date has been on academic practice of good feedback and not on student engagement with feedback and its effectiveness. (Nichol 2011, Price et al 2011, Jonsson 2012) • Students lack strategies for using feedback productively. (Burke 2009, Jonsson 2012) • Disconnect: although students value the dialogue, typically they associate feedback as being coupled to graded work in a written form. • Consequence: Mechanistic response to tutor instruction (Price et al 2011) rather than learning by experience.

17. The process of Feedback

19. Does it matter? • Graduate attributes • Prepare students for a lifetime of uncertainty, challenge and emergent or self created opportunity. (Kumar 2007) • Enabling students to recognise and use feedback ‘to make them more adaptable to an uncertain, complex and challenging environment’ (Barnett 1999) • Feedback for learning and personal development.

20. Thresholds in behaviour ‘The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs.’ John Dewey 1933

22. Threshold concepts Represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner finds it difficult to progress, within the curriculum as formulated. Ray Land Supporting students to move across the threshold of being in one space to a new possible space.

23. Where next 1. Disseminating core messages. Digital Stories Acting on feedback: Break the bad habits and make better ones. Broadening the horizons of feedback 2. Resources to help students use feedback. 3. Extension to other disciplines and institutions.

24. In conclusion • The feedback discourse needs to, and is, shifting from academic practice to student action. • Change of language from ‘assessment and feedback’ to ‘development and feedback’ • Arguably more challenging to try to influence student behaviour than that of staff.

25. References Brown, E. and Knight, P. (1994). Assessing Learners in Higher Education. London: Kogan Page Burke, D. (2009) Strategies for using feedback students bring to higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(1), 41-50. Campbell, Jonsson, A. (2012) Facilitating productive use of feedback in higher education. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(63), 63-76. Cowan, J. (2005), Designing assessment to enhance student learning. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/ps/documents/practice_guides/practice_guides/ps0069_designing_assessment_to_improve_physical_sciences_learning_march_2009.pdf[ Accessed 7th February 2012] Kumar, A. (2007) Personal, Academic and Career Development in Higher Education: SOARing to Success. Oxon: Routledge. Nichol, D. (2011) Developing students’ ability to construct feedback. Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating Enhancement Themes. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education: Glasgow. Price, M., Handley, K. and Millar, J. (2011) ‘Feedback – focussing attention on engagement’. Studies in Higher Education, 36(8), Price, M., Rust, C.,O’Donovan, B., Handley, K. (2012) Assessment Literacy: The Foundation for Improving Student Learning. Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development. Race, P. (2002) Why fix Assessment? A discussion paper.http://www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/online_resources/phil%20assess.htm [accessed May 24th 2015]