Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia South Australia Branch Workshop, 1

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Higher Education Research and Development Society
of AustralasiaSouth Australia Branch Workshop, 1
July 2005

• REINVENTING FEEDBACK IN
• THE CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITY
• Dai Hounsell
• University of Edinburgh

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THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT FOR FEEDBACK IN HIGHER
EDUCATION

• well-grounded evidence on feedbacks impact on
  learning and its value for students
• shrinking opportunities for feedback, in the wake
  of (in the UK)
• larger classes
• more diverse students
• declining unit resources
• end-loaded assessment regimes
• similar concerns in Australian HE
• (e.g. McInnis et al., 2000 DETYA, 2005)
• need for new ways of sustaining feedback that
  wont put unrealistic burdens on staff

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WORKSHOP AIMS

• Questioning traditional assumptions that feedback
  

• is best given on conventional coursework
• neednt be immediate nor prompt
• is given on finished work
• is private and individual
• is in written form

• comprises comments and a grade
• is transparent and addressable
• is best provided by the teacher
• is of a scope and focus determined by the
  teacher
• doesnt call for great skill or hard-won expertise

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WORKSHOP AIMS

• Suggesting new directions for feedback which
• are feasible and sustainable
• incorporate recent insights from research
• build on recent developments in practices

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WORKSHOP AIMS

• 3. Invite you to
• review your own professional practices in
  providing feedback to students
• explore ways in which you and your colleagues
  might re-invent feedback in your work as
  university teachers

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GUIDING PRINCIPLES

• A working re-definition of feedback
• any information, process or activity which
  affords or accelerates learning, whether by
  enabling students to achieve higher-quality
  learning outcomes than they might have otherwise
  attained, or by enabling them to attain these
  outcomes more rapidly
• Key functions of feedback
• To evaluate progress, performance or achievement
• To encourage and support
• To instil a grasp of high-quality work and how it
  might be achieved

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ASSUMPTION ONEFeedback is best given on
conventional coursework

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• post-exam feedback is rare
• feedback on non-traditional assignments can be
  discretionary or perfunctory
• I think its very important to get the feedback
  because on another course Id done the
  presentation and received really no feedback so
  youre swimming around wondering, well, you know,
  are you actually moving in the right direction?
  I think actually having written feedback as well,
  and the way it was set out, has been very useful.
  Its just picked up on your weaknesses but also
  your strengths as well so giving you some
  direction on what you really now have to go and
  focus on.
• Social Sciences student

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ASSUMPTION ONE continued

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• declining volume of coursework, and reduced
  opportunities for interaction in tutorial and
  practicals
• I If they were going to change this module for
  next year, what should they do differently?
• S2 More feedback.
• S4 Yeah, thats the main thing, I think, to know
  where we stand, how were doing.
• S3 Yeah, I would just echo that point. At
  school you were in smaller classes and always
  had more of an idea where you stood within the
  class. Whereas when youre sitting in a lecture
  theatre with 200 people if you dont understand
  something, like S4 just said, you are thinking
  Am I the only one who doesnt get that?
• (ETL Project)

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ASSUMPTION ONE

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING continued
• the potential of intrinsic as well as extrinsic
  feedback i.e.
• Intrinsic opportunities within everyday teaching
  and learning to gain a firm grasp of tutors
  expectations, and practise meeting them
• Extrinsic opportunities to get feedback on
  assignments completed outwith class time

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INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC FEEDBACKQuestionnaire
item means 1 SD from ETL Project
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ASSUMPTION ONE continued

• S The problem solving sessions we have at the
  end of this module, theyre something you dont
  get in all the modules and its really helpful
  especially for one of the papers in the exam, the
  problem solving bit.
• S1 Youve got your unit handbook that tells
  you all your references and learning objectives
  for each lecture.
• S2 And the lecture actually itself, and then
  afterwards its like discussions been done and
  then youve got the reference
• S3 And even answers to the problems that weve
  done. And the discussions afterwards. If you
  miss anything during the lesson you have it.
• S4 Its really demanding because you have to
  think and do a lot of work for it, but in the
  end, they give you the basis for to succeed. If
  you do work, of course. So its good.
• (from McCune and Hounsell, 2005)

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 1

• try to ensure that exams are not feedback-free
  zones, e.g.
• with post-exam feedback
• gt gt pre-exam retrofeed
• build student-generated feedback into
  non-traditional assignments
• blend extrinsic with intrinsic feedback, e.g.
• via collaborative problem-solving
• using personal response systems

• a. ENLARGING THE SCOPE FOR FEEDBACK
• widening opportunities for students to gain
  constructive feedback on their progress and
  performance

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ASSUMPTION TWOFeedback neednt be immediate or
prompt

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• feedback, immediacy and timeousness
• S3 If you get your coursework assignments back
  then you should be able to learn from your
  mistakes. But they come back too late for you to
  learn from your mistakes, to help you with your
  actual exam. Cause that happened last year. I
  think it was right up until about the last week
  before we got some information back. And I
  thought, well, whats the point?

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ASSUMPTION TWOFeedback neednt be immediate or
prompt

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING continued
• lack of engagement with end-loaded feedback
• assignments with no past or future (Roe, 1974)
• unintended consequences of modularisation and
  semesterisation

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 2

• earlier deadlines, faster turn-round times for
  marks and comments
• more but shorter assignments
• whats the intro/conclusion?
• update the literature review
• coursework SAQs
• staged or cumulative assignments
• c.f. the patchwork text

• b. RE-SCHEDULING FEEDBACK
• rescheduling
• assignments
• and assessments, to optimise rich, timely and
  constructive feedback

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ASSUMPTION THREEFeedback is given on finished
work

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• feedback as a loop
• When we desire a motion to follow a given
  pattern, the difference between this pattern and
  the actually performed motion is used as a new
  input to cause the part regulated to move in such
  a way as to bring its motion closer to that given
  by the pattern
• (Wiener, 1961, p.6)
• experience and practices in peer review and
  postgraduate research supervision

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 3

• c. FEED-FORWARD
• enabling students to
• engage constructively
• with tutors comments
• and to gain practice in
• revising

• a draft-comment-revision strategy, so that
  feedback is put to direct and immediate use
• c.f. looped or just-in-time feedback
• more comment on work-in-progress (notes,
  outlines, drafts, etc.), less on finished work
• help students learn how to use feedback to
  improve their work

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Pause for discussion . . .
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ASSUMPTION FOURFeedback is private and individual

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• dearth of empirical evidence that feedback to
  individuals is superior to group or whole-class
  feedback
• feedback thrives on dialogue and interchange

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 4

• combine rich generic comments to the class with
  pro forma ratings to individuals
• use whole-class feedback to focus on the
  positives
• e.g. alternative ways of answering a question
  well
• use whole-class briefings for feed-forward
• e.g. for comment on work-in-progress, strategies
  for enhancing quality of work

• d. WHOLE-CLASS FEEDBACK
• use time for feedback more effectively, through
  greater
• group or class feedback
• and less comment to
• individuals

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ASSUMPTION FIVEFeedback comments are written

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• providing legible and accessible written comments
  is time-consuming
• the largely untapped feedback potential of new
  computing and audio technologies

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 5

• e. e-FEEDBACK
• using new technology to generate, communicate,
  retrieve and monitor feedback more efficiently

• digital audio-feedback as a viable (and less
  time-consuming?) alternative to written comment
• machine-readable pro-formas, to identify feedback
  priorities
• use software to generate feedback comments

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ASSUMPTION SIXFeedback comments (mark or
grade)

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• Decline of one-to-one tutorial/feedback dialogue
• Observation as a proxy for feedback comments,
• e.g. where work is not privately submitted but
  on display
• S1 Youve got hands when youre presenting,
  its so good.
• S2 I was noticing that when I was doing it.
• S1 No but you used your hands when you were
  talking about the Northern and the Southern
  Hemisphere, and it was great because you dont
  actually have to give all the details. Like a
  diagram, you can point to bits.

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Observation as a proxy for feedback

• Social sciences
• Someone did a list of questions that they were
  going to ask at the beginning and that they went
  through. I blatantly didnt do that but I think
  its a really good idea ...
• Physical sciences
• Your slides were like really packed B had
  quite a few overheads which had little bits on
  and C just had a load of pictures. I had a
  load of slides and D had a few slides just with
  bullet points and he talked around them. So
  really there were five different types of
  presentation but I think they all came across
  really well.
• Humanities
• I think it helps if you follow a structure. Like
  lecturer X always tells you what hes going
  to say more or less and then elaborates on all
  the points, which I think is really good for
  notetaking

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LEARNING TO PRESENT (from Hounsell and McCune,
2001)
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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 6

• f. COLLABORATIVE AND ON-DISPLAY ASSIGNMENTS
• devising assignments in which students pool
  knowledge, insights, and strategies, and/or
  openly display their work to their peers

• joint literature reviews, collaborative analyses
  of data, group projects, c.
• oral or poster presentations, or
  walkabout-talkabout displays of analyses,
  solutions, interpretations c.
• any of these, plus peer-generated feedback

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Pause for discussion . . .
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ASSUMPTION SEVENFeedback is transparent and
readily addressable

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• students difficulties in making sense of tutors
  feedback
• uncertainty about assessment expectations and
  criteria
• variations in requirements - across lecturers,
  course units and subjects
• student uncertainty about how to act on the
  feedback given

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ASSUMPTION SEVEN continued

• Sandra (from James, 2000)
• You think, it would be nice to know why it was
  excellent, then perhaps I could do it again! As
  I havent got any idea why it was excellent, Ill
  never be able to, but there you go.
• Gail (from Hounsell, 1987)
• I felt pretty satisfied with it. I thought Id
  get a brilliant mark for it. I was really put
  off when I saw the tutors comments. I just
  thought it was What limits a persons ability to
  do two things at once? Not why, or how it was
  done. I just answered the question, which the
  tutor didnt think was right.

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ASSUMPTION SEVEN continued

• Explain
• A bit confused
• Linkage?
• ?
• ??
• !
• ()
• (from Ivanic et al., 2000)

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 7

• g. CRITERION-FOCUSSED FEEDBACK
• making assignment and assessment criteria more
  transparent, better exemplified, and linked to
  marks and comments

• guidance on assessment criteria linked to a bank
  of examples
• use pro forma mark-and-comment sheets
• gear whole-class feedback to toughest criteria

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ASSUMPTION EIGHTFeedback is best provided by
the teacher

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• fast-growing involvement of students and pupils
  in assessment and feedback
• growing awareness of benefits of self-generated
  and peer feedback

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VARIETIES OF STUDENT INVOLVEMENT IN
ASSESSMENT(Hounsell and McCulloch, 1999)
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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 8

• h. STUDENT INVOLVEMENT IN FEEDBACK
• developing students
• capacity to
• engage with strengths and weaknesses in their own
  work
• evaluate others work
• give constructive feedback

• students apply familiar criteria to evaluate
  but not grade their own work
• students adapt familiar criteria to an
  unfamiliar task
• students identify high-quality work done by their
  peers
• students pool ideas on how work might be improved

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ASSUMPTION NINEWhat feedback is to be given is
determined by the tutor

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• Students may vary in the kind and quantity of
  feedback they need or desire as learners
• (e.g. because of differences in background
  knowledge or experience of an assessed task)
• How highly any instance of feedback is valued by
  students will vary in relation to their
  aspirations and commitment to the course
• Feedback comprises
• information about the gap between actual
  performance and the desired goal
• action taken to close the gap, and thus attain
  the goal desired
• (Ramaprasad, 1983)

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 9

• i. ELECTIVE FEEDBACK
• exploring ways of recognising that feedback does
  not have an inherent or invariant value,
  irrespective of the student to whom the feedback
  is being offered

• students indicate those aspects of an assignment
  on which feedback would be most helpful to them
  personally
• greater use of whole-class feedback, to 'buy
  time' for additional, individualised feedback, at
  students request

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Pause for discussion . . .
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ASSUMPTION TENBecoming expert at giving feedback
isnt hard

• GROUNDS FOR QUESTIONING
• Evidence of large disparities in feedback across
  courses and tutors
• New lecturers experiences of marking and
  commenting
• Dearth of accessible discussion and examples of
  good feedback

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SCOPE FOR REINVENTING PRACTICES, 10

• j. ENHANCED FEEDBACK EXPERTISE
• encouraging colleagues to collate and share their
  insights and experiences on giving feedback well

• inducting and mentoring new colleagues in
  providing effective feedback
• blend second-marking with consultation on what
  feedback would be most effective
• collaborate in the use of technology to generate
  feedback

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CONCLUDING COMMENTS

• These are possibilities to be considered, not
  prescriptions for practice
• Their appropriateness will vary widely
• These possibilities entail re-thinking
• when feedback is given, for maximum impact
• how feedback can be generated and communicated
• what functions feedback fulfils . . .
• . . . and what other complementary ways might
  be open to you, in accelerating students learning