Previous blogs in this series have considered tone, feedback literacy and challenges in the relationship between assessment and feedback.
But hold your horses – as we enter the final furlongs of this blog series, perhaps it is a good time to ask: what are the practical approaches which might improve these feedback experiences?
(I’ve gone with ‘approaches’ as a term. Tactics has too much of a lean towards the combative and ‘strategies’ also has notions of stratagems, maybe approaches suggests an increasing closeness and proximity. Sadly, this has meant that the blog could not make any allusion to feedback as a form of passing, movement and possession-based football or as a popular Greek food outlet).
Here’s three approaches to either kick things off, or whet your appetite:
| A- Prac[tice] to the future We could complete more practice tasks in each unit, with great feedback, which are linked to final graded assessments. | B – A bit peer-shaped We could create opportunities (formal or informal) to discuss our work with senior peers. | C – The 5 min win Staff give audio/screencast feedback on an extract from an assessment in a five-minute recording. |
Some points to review.
Both A and C are not about increasing marking loads for staff (where you are going with approach A, you won’t need loads (of marking)). Something like a two-stage exam is an excellent learning opportunity for students and provides not only valuable formative assessment experience, but also helps with internalising standards for students. This might mean students recognising for themselves how to include edit or redraft their work to make marked improvements.
Likewise, with approach C, if written comments are already given, the efficiency and rapport benefits of this form of feedback are widely recognised.
Across some UoB programmes there are already examples of approach B such as ‘study families’, and these also emphasise, as many BILT colleagues are always keen to point out, that the benefit of peer feedback is as much in the giving of the feedback as in the receiving of it; this is essentially an extension of what many regard as a protégé effect.
Next up we’ve got the most precarious of puns amongst the approaches. I warmly invite you to offer an alternative (improvement) to something that sounds a bit like cauliflower cheese.
| D – Collate-feedback, please We could bring all feedback received on our course to a session to ask questions about it and identify patterns in the feedback. | E – For your marks, get set,… Give us feedback comments only and ask us to prepare and attend a tutorial before we receive our marks. | F – Go with the flow [diagram] We could co-create with staff a visual summary of how the previous assessments on our course link to our current assessment. |
But the substance of this is all about finding ways to connect feedback and understand more of the how assessments connect to broader ambitions around programme learning outcomes. There are some great examples of the landscape of assessment being used to help strengthen understanding of feedback, such as the School of Biological Science’s Assessment and Feedback Portfolio. Naomi Winstone’s recent mention of ‘landing maps’ for assessment was also a really clear representation of this approach.
Approach E often manages to provoke an emotive response. I have used a similar process in my teaching at secondary school and can recollect clearly the comment from a Year 10 student when going through their mock paper that this was ‘quite annoying in a way, but also effective’. I’m comfortable with being ‘annoying’ if it butts up against the status quo that ‘giving a mark is the signal to the learner that the learning is over’.
| G- The cover story We could submit a coversheet with our coursework explaining how we have acted on prior feedback and what we would like feedback on. | H – The self-ish approach We could engage in more peer-review and self-evaluation. | I – Compare the mark-it Mark an example piece of work (individually or in a group). Compare my feedback comments on the work with what the staff comments were. |
H and I are feedback activities that are designed to take place within direct teaching time, but these can also be established as effective forms of independent learning. One particular refrain in focus groups around H and I is that need to dig a little bit deeper in understanding the ways to make improvement. For example, many students often recognise that one extract is not as ‘critically evaluative’ as another: the fundamental principle here is how to unpack and model the cognitive processes to elucidate this (easier said than done!).
| J – marginal gains Staff use in-text comments to help us see exactly where we need to address the issues raised in the feedback summary. | ? | ? |
Wearing electrically-heated overshorts during assessments is not the approach suggested for J, but often mentioned is the challenges around receiving a block of feedback at the end of an assessment and recognising how it can be specifically applied. Some of these approaches can aggregate together, such as pairing this with screencast feedback and offer a different approach to feedback.
The last two approaches have intentionally been left blank. This is in recognition that through partnership and collaboration with students, new ideas need space for development. What do different cohorts of students make of these approaches?
The Curriculum Enhancement Programme (full disclosure: I often mistype it as Enchantment), together with the Students’ Union is running a series of Fast-Track Feedback sessions to explore such questions.
These interactive one-hour sessions are running up until the summer of 2024 for undergraduate and postgraduate students and offer the opportunity (and a voucher for participating) to reflect on ways to make the most of their feedback on the course. They also aim to provide further insight into effective ways of shaping experiences of feedback on courses to programme teams.
A number of programmes and student reps have already expressed an interest in working with the project, so if you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch!
