Keynote I - What Makes Good Feedback Good?

 Professor Margaret Price, Oxford Brookes University

The keynote speaker addressed student feedback in the context of a higher education environment, that is dynamic and subject to a large number of external and internal pressures. Within that context, there appears to be general consensus that feedback is a crucial component of learning and assessment, and that assessment itself is a key driver of learning. Professor Price pointed out that the discourse of assessment is relatively simple for such a complex subject and suggested a need for new and more descriptive terminology than exists at present. She also noted the added pressure of higher student expectations and a louder student voice from ‘customers’ paying high fees.

Oxford Brookes and Cardiff have collaborated on a new piece of research, examining what makes feedback good in the perceptions of the students and what domains influence these perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in this context. The project used student researchers and a cross-discipline approach. Students taking part were asked to bring one piece of ‘good’ feedback and one ‘bad’. They were interviewed around these pieces and then the feedback was analysed. The domains used in the analysis covered quality, context, student development and expectations and were further divided into areas such as technical factors, particularity (i.e. personal/impersonal feedback), recognition of effort, assessment design (crucial), student resilience (can they accept criticism?), student desires (to learn or to achieve a high grade?) etc. The full report is available at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/.

The research found that the domains overlapped and compensated for each other so that feedback that was poor in one domain might be good in another, and vice versa. Three important messages for those giving feedback that emerged were:

• Give it plenty of time
• Train, develop and support staff in giving feedback
• Limit anonymous feedback (personalised feedback scored highly)

Professor Price suggested that students need to develop their assessment literacy if they are to be able to gain the most from assessment and feedback. This can be done through developing their technical understanding of marking and grading, through self and peer assessment, and through an appreciation of what grading criteria actually mean. She pointed out that academics see hundreds of pieces of work and have a tacit understanding of what a 2:1 looks like, for example, but how are students to know this? Give them good examples was the answer and put them through stages of self-assessment, peer review, drafting, re-drafting and perhaps peer assisted learning where more experienced students support beginners and help them to develop their assessment literacy.

An overarching message resulting from the research was that ‘You don’t need to get it right all the time’: students are very forgiving of delayed feedback or low grades when they can see that there has been a real effort to engage with their individual piece of work. Examples of good practice are available at https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/inclusive-assessment-in-practice-conference.

Finally – she concluded by saying that this should go beyond university and students should leave having developed these valuable self-evaluation skills to take with them into the future.

Report by Celia Cozens, e-Learning Content Manager, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Track B3 - Using My Learning in the Assessment Cycle: How Hard Can it Be? Challenges and Benefits of Using VLEs for Assessment

Jas Ahmad, Middlesex University, Business School
Luiza Dantas, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Jas and Luiza provided an energetic presentation on the benefits and versatility of integrating My Learning (Moodle) tools into the assessment cycle.

Luiza opened by describing the various stages of the assessment cycle; 1) specifying requirements, 2) setting assessment criteria and expectations, 3) supporting students through the assessment process, 4) submission of assignments, 5) marking and feedback, 6) returning marks and feedback, and 7) reflection. She identified that more focus and engagement is needed in the first 4 stages than is currently being given.

Jas then walked us through his approach to these 4 stages of the assessment cycle. Jas advocates the use of Breeze presentations.  Breeze is available freely online and allows the lecturer to upload Powerpoint slides coupled with short audio narration for each slide.  This allows Jas’ students to gain the basic information regarding assessment design at home, allowing for richer engagement and more informed questions during his face to face lectures.

Jas emphasised the need to ‘frontload’ your course with information and support.  Jas sets out his expectations early on, providing a recorded lectures, online announcements and engages with online discussions on how students should prepare for seminars, lectures and assignments.  In his experience, students routinely need the same guidance at the start of every term, so providing this information in a pre-recorded format saves valuable time and confusion in the long run.

Challenges to providing online guidance and support can include resistance from students who see more value in receiving the information in a face to face format. Gaining the students ‘buy in’ early on and continuously throughout the course is important for the success of online support.  It is also important to consider necessary adjustments for disabled students, if these students are not considered in the preparation stage of teaching then this can create a lot of back tracking and extra work later.

Jas empathised with colleagues who may be reluctant to try out technologies they are not familiar with due to fear of failure, and the potential for being caught on camera making a mistake. He recommends speaking to the camera as though you are speaking to a student in the room, if you trip up over a sentence or need to correct yourself it is not a big deal, and with time and practice confidence will grow.

Luiza closed the session by reminding the audience that the Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement is on hand to support any members of staff who would like to branch out and explore the potential of using My Learning in their assessment strategies.

Report by Jessica Isaacs, Online Learning Content Developer, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Track C1 - Digital Stories - Everyone Has a Story to Tell… ‘Assessing Students Using Digital Stories and Bringing Out Their Creativity'

Alex Chapman and Luiza Dantas
Middlesex University, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

The theme of the session was digital storytelling and how this can be used as an assessment tool. Luiza Dantas introduced the presentation by explaining that stories are universal, used in all cultures and passed down from one generation to the next. We all know how to tell a story so how can we take this capability and use it for reflection and to present our work for assessment?

Using digital technology to add sound, colour and images to a story can bring it to life and make it engaging both for the storyteller and the intended audience. Luiza Dantas showed an example from YouTube of the story of Australian Aboriginal culture – images of the environment, the people and their art and work, backed with Aboriginal music, combined to give a rich and informative overview in a very short time. But though this was interesting and entertaining, we had to get on to the serious business of assessment – how could this be deep and rigorous enough for assessing our students? There were a few in the room who were definitely waiting to be convinced and some doubt was in the air.

The presenters put forward a very convincing argument for the benefits of using this tool. Luiza Dantas pointed out that – on the whole – students hate reflective writing. However, many of them are asked to produce a written reflection for assessment. Why not use a digital story, they asked. It is much more enjoyable for everyone and focuses the student fully on being concise, to the point, engaging, creative and reflective. What about presentations? How many students, particularly international ones, suffer the undue stress of standing up and talking, accompanied by ubiquitous PowerPoint slides? Why not get them to create a digital story instead? The same could be used to replace an Executive Summary; how much more creative and engaging that would be. Another idea was a digital CV. In this digital age, how impressive it would be to receive a digital story about your prospective employee – and you would know that they were equipped with the technological skills that are so important in 21st-century employment. The CV can be part of a person’s LinkedIn profile – the possibilities are endless … (you can tell I enjoyed this session).

Alex Chapman presented some excellent examples of students’ work, from the Business School and from a Mental Health programme. He pointed out (to the doubters in the room) that these assessments generally carry a small percentage of marks and are normally accompanied by a storyboard, and a written reflection as well as the story itself. He indicated the range of areas that could be assessed, including project planning, editing, research, critical analysis, originality, reflection, creativity and more.

Students were asked to feed back on the experience and while most started out as unsure or negative, afterwards they reported that it was exciting, enjoyable and skill enhancing, and they would like to see it used in more modules. A few questions arose, mostly to do with copyright issues and it was agreed that clear guidance should be given at the start of the process as this – like referencing – is all part of developing students’ academic integrity. Luiza Dantas concluded by pointing out that as well as developing all the core skills, digital stories also develop technical, visual and digital literacies – so important for employability. What’s not to like?

Assessing using digital stories from mdxaltc

Report by Celia Cozens, eLearning Content Manager, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Track C2: Developing quality feedback and assessment literacy in dance

 Julia K. Gleich
 Head of Choreography (London Studio Centre)

London Studio Centre’s shared their institution development of their Learning & Teaching Strategy 2013-18 focussing on assessment and feedback. The nature of practice at LSC makes use of intense continuous, day-to-day formative feedback by both tutors and peers, which ac
counts for unusual learning experience in HE. Addressing the high frequency of assessment and feedback is at centre of LSC’s culture of quality enhancement and review of assessment strategies that have led to significant successes in the National Student Survey.

The institution has reviewed strategies associated with developing effective feedback and assessment that include ways of creatively assessing creativity and identified points to consider in constructing effective feedback.

Identified Issues related to creative assessment:

·         How to “prepare for assessment” in a context of creativity

·         Prior learning

·         Tick-boxing / Goal-oriented-ness

·         Subjectivity

·         House styles

·         New ideas and risk-taking

                                                        

The staff at LSC also recognize that Assessment Literacy is a double-edged sword and if students are too focused on assessment, they will be unwilling to take risks and discover their own voices in a creative environment. In addition, Assessment tasks and criteria must be designed to reward even “inappropriate” choices as students re-invent themselves and develop new movement vocabularies, explore compositional strategies and form their artistic identities.

Constructing feedback

At LSC feedback is provided taking into consideration the points below:

·         Specificity

·         Constructive comments

·         Appropriate language

·         Transparency – see example below. If not clear from the starting point comments like “ student needs to be more analytical” – are not clear.

·         Enabling and encouraging/Positive but honest

·         Personal

The presentation also included seven principles of good feedback practice From Dr Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick below:

“good feedback practice should facilitate the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning, encourage dialogue, clarify what is good performance, deliver quality information about the students learning, provide information to teachers to shape learning and should be motivational for the students and create positive self-esteem.”

Creatively Assessing Creativity from mdxaltc

Report by Betty Sinyinza, Educational Tehcnologist, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE) 

Track C3 - Assessing Creativity

  Jon Mortimer, Middlesex University, School of Art and Design

Is transparency important for assessing creativity? Nationally, assessment and feedback is the lowest scoring category of the National Student Survey (NSS). For Jon’s programme their assessment and feedback satisfaction score has risen 25% over the last 3 years to 89%. Jon’s presentation describes how this was achieved.

‘How do you assess creativity?’ was the main problem that needed the teaching team’s attention. Assessment instils a pursuit of grades, a measure of how well you are doing compared to your peers and others who have come before you. How you as a teacher do you make this judgement when assessing creativity? And equally importantly how do you communicate this to students so they are aware of what is expected of them?

In Art and Design, students are commonly set design tasks to demonstrate their creativity. Jon says ‘in design it doesn’t matter how simple or detailed the question is there are thousands of possible answers…the job of the tutor is to help students think about the right questions to find the personal answers, that’s where the artist side of designing comes out’.

In the absence of clear assessment criteria for creativity, the tendency is for students to align their work to well received work of their predecessors and the creative inclinations of their assessors. This is clearly counterproductive and stifles creativity.

If you think about how students engage with assessment, students use their experience, design knowledge and creative talents. Creativity often involves asking increasingly complex questions, to produce a design, in most cases the final end product is arrived at after a process of changes in the designs over time. This design process needs to be acknowledged in assessment.

Jon says when assessing creativity there is a tension between connoisseurship and transparent assessment criteria. Jon describes the use of a marking rubric that includes the development process or the design journey in the assessment criteria. The assessment criteria has some degree of flexibility in that it is open to change through valid arguments raised by students at the start of the module.

Clearly informing students about the assessment criteria from the onset helps students approach assessment knowing what is expected of them. Students are asked to present their work, these are made available for both peer and staff feedback. This approach may also provide a way of reducing the subjectivity and bias in assessing creativity. Watch the presentation to see how the teaching team breaks up the assessment criteria to present it visually and use video feedback.

Jon mortimer - Assessing Creativity from mdxaltc

Report by Asanka Dayananda, Senior Academic Developer, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Plenary/Panel Session

Jacqui Boddington (Chair), Prof. Paul Haywood, Phil Barter, Dr. Carol L Davies & Prof. Margaret Price

Watch this video for some innovative and nuanced responses to the following questions:

• Are we moving fast enough with assessment design or are we just slightly improving on old techniques?
• How can we deal with academic dishonesty in the form of  'essay mills'?
• What are your views on top-down and bottom-up approaches to assessment design?
• In the context of an OSCE, for example, how can you grade a student's level of 'compassion' or 'empathy'?

Hear the latest news and opportunities for Learning and Teaching research and development at Middlesex University (18:30)

See our PGCertHE award winners! (22:20)

 

Workshop 1- Changing Perceptions of Ourselves: How Graduate Academic Assistants are Altering the Learning Experience of Education Studies Students Through Assessment Literacy

Dr. Carole L Davis, Sandip K Gill and Kristína Repová
Middlesex University, School of Health and Education

Carole, along with Sandip and Kristina, facilitated a lively interactive session, with activities around the clarity of guidance and assessment criteria, the importance of the quality of feedback and peer and self-assessment. Using specific examples from the GAA’s sessions with Education Studies students,  to prompt thinking and discussion, the 50 or so participants were tasked with discussing and feeding back suggestions for how they might tackle the specific issues raised by students. These issues included self-doubt by a high achieving student and another students consistent inability to understand and respond to assessment tasks. The session also outlined some of the interesting approaches the department and GAA’s have developed that students were appreciative of, such as a book club for students to discuss readings together.

The video clip provides a snapshot of the liveliness of the session and wealth of discussion that arose.

Changing Perceptions of ourselves from mdxaltc

Workshop 2- Appartunity or Appain?

Kate Brown, Sheila Cunningham, Jodie Ward, Kate Wilkinson and Jo Wilson, Middlesex University, School of Health and Education

Are apps in the classroom an opportunity or a pain? This was the question posed by this workshop with each group exploring answers for themselves. We were promptly organised into groups of 6-8 participants per table, all seated around board-style guided questions to allow us to explore the use of (mobile) applications at Middlesex. The workshop turned out to be as exciting as its title and setup hinted at, and was prepared with a good dose of creativity and carefully organised questions.

I’ll describe the experience at our table...

Participants were from different areas, with some qualifying themselves as ‘technology dinosaurs’, others quietly having used apps in the classroom for some time.  All of us seemed very keen to define what is meant by ‘apps’ (mobile apps only or others?), and the conversation quickly moved to practical considerations (‘but does this work on a Samsung tablet? ‘are all apps free?’ etc.) and then onto accessibility (‘would the library consider putting iPads on loan for students who do not have one?’). We also discussed the use of technology as a possible distraction in the classroom and how we can deal with this.

I particularly enjoyed how one academic talked about how he used 3D-visualisations of difficult concepts in his teaching as a way to break down a dry two-day course and as a way to make some of his presentations more vividly understandable (‘and your work is half done!’).  We eventually agreed that we needed to know where to ask for support and guidance (both CAPE Senior Academic Developers and School Librarians were referred to at that point) in order to be able to focus on pedagogical considerations and we talked about looking at apps in exactly the same way as you look at other new initiatives, with the same critical approach and part of an evaluative process.

We also touched on the potential of apps in an assessment context; we had more difficulty with this. We wondered whether they could help with developing certain aspects such as memorising skills. We also identified areas where we thought apps may currently be difficult to support assessment practice, such as in assessing creativity. One group wondered whether apps might be able to help you with minimising elements of subjectivity in the future and one group had come to the conclusion that we should develop our own apps, as a way to tailor them to our needs.

I was really impressed with the quality of the conversation in such as short space of time and with as few as 8 people from a range of areas. Definitely the highlight of the day for me.

Here are links to the articles and BBC item used during the session:

• Exploring Students' Mobile Learning Practices in Higher Education
• Mobile devices in medicine: a survey of how medical students, residents, and faculty use smartphones and other mobile devices to find information
• Developing confidence in the use of digital tools in teaching 
• The apps giving hospitals a cutting edge
• Study Skills Apps will be available from Middlesex University Library as of August 2015

Report by Pascale Colonna, Senior Academic Developer, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)