Happy New Year!
In the blog this month:
Sign up to the Learning and Teaching Showcase
“Gimme, Gimme, Gimme: Giving good quality feedback to lots of students fast”
Researchers Day enjoyed by all
Dates for your diary
Sign up to the Learning and Teaching Showcase
26th January 2011, 4pm until 6pm
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VQNXVmhDK8
To book your place at the Showcase please visit the LDC website
“Gimme, Gimme, Gimme: Giving good quality feedback to lots of students fast”
In the third of our Good Morning City Fora which was scheduled in December, Andy Oliver from the LDC, considered the question of giving good feedback to students. 
How do you give good quality feedback to lots of students in a short time frame?
Overall, there are a number of points to consider when providing feedback, and providing students with good quality feedback is essential to ensure that they are engaged with the course.
Some of the ways that can help provide good feedback are making feedback personal; ensuring feedback is not too generic; and timeliness is also very important.
One of the key issues to consider is whether or not the feedback will help the learner in the future. Students sometimes feel that feedback for assignments are self-contained and cannot see how the comments will help improve grades on the next essay.
Feeding forward is a useful way of overcoming this, where the work is broken down into stages, and students are given feedback in advance of submitting their assignment. Good quality feedback can be given throughout the course or module, and should underpin the study.
Students frequently state that the feedback that is provided is insufficiently personal, and one way to overcome this is to address the feedback to the individual and include their name in the comments. Another point that is often made is that feedback can be too generic, and a way of overcoming that is to personalise the feedback.
Technology can also be used as a key tool, for example using pebblepad to allow students to write reflective blogs about their experiences, and provide feedback online.
Overall, there are a number of points to consider when providing feedback. Ensuring timely, good quality, personalised feedback will help ensure students feel motivated and work well.
Researcher’s Day enjoyed by all
On 6th December 2010, one hundred researchers from across the University battled against the snow to gather together for the first ever Researcher’s Day here at City University.
The Researcher’s Day was hosted by the LDC and the ADU, and provided a day of workshops and plenary sessions designed specifically for PhD students and early career researchers. Attendees had the choice of 20 different sessions ranging from ‘Gaining Ethics Approval’ to ‘How to Get Published in Journals’. All of the sessions were delivered by academic and professional staff from across the University who kindly agreed to share their experience of research at City.
Professor Paul Curran opened the day with a presentation on research at City, and the day was closed with a panel discussion on ‘What is Research in my Discipline?’
In addition to providing researchers with an opportunity to learn more about research skills, the day aimed to start building a community of researchers in the University by providing networking opportunities during lunch and at a closing drinks reception.
This event was the first of three Researcher’s Days planned for this academic year. The next Researcher’s Day is planned for 7th April, with the third day taking place on 22nd June.
For more information and to see a video of the panel session please visit the LDC website
Dates for your diary
The LDC is hosting a range of events, sessions and workshops this year, we do hope that you can attend at least some of these. The up and coming dates to note are as follows:
Learning Development Showcase – 26th January 2011
Good Morning City: The Bold and the Beautiful – Creating good, interactive handouts – 23rd February
Good Morning City: Birds of a Feather – How to use Twitter to enable learning – 23rd March
Researchers’ Development Day – 7th April 2011
The LDC is also able to offer training and consultancy on a range of learning and teaching related topics. If you would like to find out more please visit our website