Considering feedback through a disciplinary lens

Exploring feedback practices and priorities in different academic fields

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Workshop outline•I

ntroduction and icebreaker•R

eview and discussion of general feedback advice

•Consideration of disciplinary practices• Peer review practices (feedback for academics)• Departmental practices (feedback for students)

•Feedback as part of disciplinary practice

•Developing or extending individual and department approaches to feedback

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Session Aims

•review and critique general advice on giving feedback to students

•identify feedback practices within participants’ disciplines (including those in operation for academics as well as students)

• engage critically with current disciplinary feedback practices and priorities

• Do current practices map on to subject benchmark statements?• What subject priorities are being communicated through feedback?

•examine and compare (from a disciplinary perspective) participants’ current feedback approaches

•consider how to extend existing feedback strategies

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16/In this session, participants will …

Feedback - icebreaker

•Please think about instances in which you receive feedback.• Jot down up to 3 characteristics of the feedback

that you find most useful.• Discuss these with two others.

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General advice for giving feedback to students (drawing on Juwah, et al. 2004)

Ideally, good feedback …

1. facilitates the development of self assessment (reflection) in learning.

2. encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning.

3. helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards).

4. provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance.

5. delivers high quality information to students about their learning.

6. encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem.

7. provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape the teaching.

Imag

e:

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Photo: woodleywonderworks. CC BY-NC 2.0

General advice for giving feedback to students (drawing on Juwah, et al. 2004)

Ideally, good feedback …

1.Facilitates the development of self assessment (reflection) in learning.• Students should see their own assessment of their work as

an integral part of the feedback process. Feedback is not just something ‘done’ to students. 2. Encourages teacher and peer

dialogue around learning.• Feedback should be an

ongoing dialogue, looking forward as well as back. h

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Feedback pattern to engage studentsDuhs, R. (2011)

1. Student does work and comments on it.2. Student submits draft and/or works on draft

with peer review and tutor check.3. Student improves work.4. Student submits work to tutor for marking and

feedback.5. Student studies feedback.6. Student plans follow-up action.

Rosalind Duhs 2011 cc-by-nc-sa

Feedback pattern to engage students

Recommended pattern:

student

student/peers/tutor

student

tutor tutor student

student

Self Assessment

Peer Assessment

Draft and redraft

Tutor AssessmentTutor Assessment

Feedback action plan

Rosalind Duhs 2011 cc-by-nc-sa

‘One potentially constraining factor is that feedback may mark the end of a transaction rather than a step in an ongoing process of development. The feedback can convey to a student what has been done well and what could be improved, but if the assignment came towards the end of a course (as it frequently does), there may be no direct or imminent opportunity to try to put the resulting feedback to good use.’

(Hounsell, et al., 2008 cited in 'Strategies to improve feedback').

General advice for giving feedback to students (drawing on Juwah, et al. 2004)

3. Helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards).

• Hounsell (1997 cited in Juwah, et al 2004) and others have shown that students and lecturers frequently do not have a shared understanding of what constitutes a successful piece of assessed writing.

4. Provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance.

• Ideally, feedback should help students get closer to the desired standard for the task. Juwah, et al, observe that more opportunities for students to act on feedback should be made available.

5. Delivers high quality information to students about their learning.

• Timely feedback is of most use to students. Research suggests that feedback should be relevant to the task and stated criteria, and not so lengthy that it is overwhelming to the student.

General advice for giving feedback to students (drawing on Juwah, et al. 2004)

6. Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem.

Students see good feedback as motivational. (NUS report, 2008)

7. Provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape the teaching.

One of the potential advantages of using feedback dialogues is that the teacher gains more insight into student perspectives and performance.

(Hughes, et al. 2011)

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Discussion points

What other broad principles would participants wish to add to the SENLEF list?

Thinking as a subject specialist, what are your priorities for feedback?

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Activity 1: Feedback principles and disciplines

Please use the grid (handout 1) to consider these principles in light of feedback practices in your discipline.

Please take up to 10 minutes to work through the grid, either individually or in pairs.

Discussion W

hat does the introduction of disciplinarity as a lens offer to the discussion of feedback principles?

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Feedback as part of disciplinary practice for academics

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Some examples of instances in which academics receive feedback

Journal article reviewers Writing with co-authors Conference submissions/presentations

Book editors Course teams/committees Submissions to professional bodies

Appraisal/promotion cases Online writing (eg blogs) Grant proposals/reports

Discussion point

Being a writer and recipient of feedback in your subject … When and how do you receive or give feedback on research?

What are the practices and priorities in your field? (Do you tend to get written feedback, spoken feedback? Is it constructive? Are there opportunities for informal feedback?)

Activity 2: Disciplinary feedback practices – peer review

Please take the feedback and guidelines that you have brought with you and consider the following:

•What is being valued here? (for example, results, writing style, research methodology, reference to the existing literature?)

• How is the feedback communicated?

• How much developmental feedback is offered?

•What aspects of the feedback (content and process) are specific to your subject area?

Activity 2 - Discussion

Having worked through the questions on the previous slide, please discuss your findings in mixed disciplinary groups.

•Are there commonalities across disciplines?

•What features of the feedback are specific to certain disciplines?

Implications for feedback to students?

•How much of the reviewing experience can be transferred to giving feedback to students in your field?

•Do you ever show students the types of feedback you receive as a writer in your subject?

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Activity 3: Disciplinary aims and feedback

•P

lease look at the benchmarking statement for your discipline: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/AssuringStandardsAndQuality/subject-guidance/Pages/Honours-degree-benchmark-statements.aspx

•Using the relevant section of the statement (eg ‘teaching, learning and assessment’ or ‘graduate attributes’ or similar), please consider the extent to which certain types of or approaches to feedback might help students develop the attributes or skills identified here.

Activity 4: Revising your feedback practice

•How could you develop your approach to feedback in order to make it more relevant to student learning in your discipline?

•Please review either a specific assessment item on your course or your feedback practices more generally and consider ways in which you might extend or change the approach to feedback that you are using.

Conclusions

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• Feedback is part of the discipline and, as such, is shaped by subject conventions.• Feedback can help students enter disciplinary conversations.• Dialogic feedback and ‘feedforward’ help students see feedback as part of a process of learning the subject

Photo: Rosipaw CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

References•C

arnell, E.; MacDonald, J.; McCallum, B.; and Scott, M. (2008) Passion and Politics: Academics reflect on writing for publication. London: IOE.

•Duhs, R. (2011) ‘Assessment and feedback to students: assessment shapes learning’ http://www.ucl.ac.uk/calt/cpd4he/resources/assessment

•Hounsell, D., McCune, V., Hounsell, J. and Litjens, J. (2008) The quality of guidance and feedback to students. Higher Education Research & Development, 27.1, pp. 55-67.

•Juwah, C.; Macfarlane-Dick, D.; Matthew, B.; Nicol, D.; Ross, D.; and Smith, B. (2004) ‘Enhancing student learning through effective formative feedback’ HEA publication. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id353_senlef_guide.pdf

•NUS Student Experience Report (2008)

http://www.nus.org.uk/PageFiles/350/NUS_StudentExperienceReport.pdf

Learning Resource MetadataField/Element Value:Title Disciplinary Thinking – Feedback: presentation

Description Presentation slides for a workshop on taking a disciplinary approach to developing feedback practices in HE.

Theme Feedback

Subject HE - Education

Author Colleen McKenna & Jane Hughes: HEDERA, 2012

Owner The University of Bath

Audience Educational developers in accredited programmes & courses in higher education.

Issue Date 24/05/2012

Last updated Date 04/08/2012

Version Final

PSF Mapping A3, K5

License Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Keywords ukoer, education, discthink, disciplinary thinking, hedera, university of bath, feedback, assessment