One of the Bristol SU and BILT collaborations this year is focussed on a co-creation project designed to promote a positive culture of feedback engagement, recognising the long-term value of feedback engagement and the range of feedback opportunities and skills which can be developed. You can find a bit more about the background to the project in this blog.
As Feedback Engagement Fellow for the School of Education, Anthonia Daikpor (MSc Education) has been leading part of the BILT/Bristol SU collaboration to help further develop this positive culture of active feedback engagement.
Anthonia chose to develop feedback engagement postcards and run a workshop at the School of Education to promote an understanding of how students’ emotional responses to feedback can influence their engagement with it.
We caught up with Anthonia to find out more.
Anthonia, can you tell us a bit more about your project?
I know there are many avenues where students are encouraged to discuss their feedback, but only a few that are student-led and far fewer that acknowledge the role emotions play in whether students actually engage with that feedback. While I was having conversations with my classmates and in my role as a course representative, I noticed that many students have cried over their grades and then moved on, developed negative feelings towards unit tutors due to perceived unfairness, focused only on the overall grade rather than specific comments, or allowed feedback to significantly affect their day.
I wanted to explore a different path for feedback engagement by acknowledging these emotional responses. I thought creating colourful, physical feedback engagement postcards that students can fill out and ‘let go’ of, as a fun and reflective first step in engaging with feedback that they might have otherwise ignored. The postcards also act as invitations to a more interactive workshop, where students will respond to live Mentimeter polls, get to use an emotions colour wheel to identify how they feel about specific feedback, and reflect on whether those emotional responses are helpful or harmful.
At the end of the workshop, they will also have time to complete the Bristol Skills Profile, focusing on being proactive about their wellbeing. Honestly, working on this project has been demanding, but the support I have received from the entire FEF team, and the School of Education staff has been fundamental in ensuring that I have all I need to see it to completion.
What are you looking forward to finding out more about in terms of feedback engagement?
I’d like to discover more about how different students experience feedback differently, and how an understanding of these experiences can help us design more supportive and impactful feedback practices. I believe this project can also help to inform if students are interested in attending more events led by their fellow students.
What’s been helpful in working on the project in this way?
It has been great to use specific insights from my fellow students to fine-tune what the workshop should look like and to make sure it is especially valuable to all of us. Also, the postcards don’t contain the usual lengthy format of a survey and has caught students’ interest in knowing what it is all about. Many have picked up copies just because ‘it looks cute’.
Many of my unit tutors’ interests have also been piqued by the interesting angle, and they are eager to understand students’ emotional responses to feedback better. So, this project will not only help the students in developing better feedback engagement, but it will also help to inform tutors’ understanding of how their feedback is received.
If you could share one final message about your work on student feedback engagement, what would it be?
Feedback (or as some people say, Feedforward) isn’t just about grades; it can be an emotional experience. How students feel when they receive it can shape whether they engage with it at all. If we can acknowledge these emotions and create safe spaces for reflection, we can help students not just look at their feedback but act on it and use it to grow.
Mia Stevens, Bristol SU Undergraduate Education Officer
“Anthonia’s work in the School of Education perfectly exemplifies the goals of our Feedback Fellow project: to be student-led, student-informed, and co-created with schools. Her research on students’ emotional responses to their assessment feedback will provide some fascinating provocations for her workshop, with the hope of extending these conversations into tangible actions around feedback engagement across her school. I’m really looking forward to seeing the outcomes of Anthonia’s brilliant work!“
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