Contents
Presenters
Dr Clare Tyrer – Senior Lecturer in Educational Development
Dr Stamatia Papathanasiou – Lecturer in Diagnostic Radiotherapy
Paper
The paper emphasises student engagement in assessment and, particularly, feedback design. Peer feedback was a key component, designed to help the module participants self-regulate by evaluating their work against standards (Carless, 2015). Providing constructive feedback is cognitively demanding and giving students ownership may also increase engagement in the process.
High-quality feedback is frequently purported to have one of the strongest influences on students’ learning (Hattie and Timperley, 2007) yet it can feel somewhat ‘tagged on’, a procedural summative assessment mechanism with which students may not engage once they have received their final grade. This paper will explore how feedback was enabled through assessment design on one MA in Academic Practice module (MAAP) at City St. Georges. Central to the design process was engaging students in a ’mosaic’ of feedback practices throughout the module to enhance their and others’ work. The paper will document how feedback was integrated in a staged, iterative assessment design, congruent with institutional policy, to position it as “a fundamental part of curriculum design, not an episodic mechanism delivered by teachers to learners” (Boud & Molloy, 2013, p.699). The key issues to be addressed are the following:
- The timing of the feedback, including pre-session; during class, and as part of the two-stage assessment design to enable student to apply the feedback from the first task to the second;
- The modality of the feedback, including spoken, written, and technology-enabled feedback to enhance learning and support future development;
- The degree of participation, who is involved in the feedback: self; peer; tutor and AI; to engage students in feedback interactions
- The purpose of the feedback: as self-appraisal (Winstone et al., 2017), during teaching to support learning and teacher adaptation, and, in more formal processes, as provision for formative and summative assessments.
- Students’ response to the process plus some of the challenges involved in implementing the design, and reflections for future iterations
While the module discussed is situated in academic practice, the principles of staged feedback, multimodalities, and peer participation are transferable to a range of disciplinary contexts. For example, iterative peer feedback can support students’ development of practical competencies; and can promote critical thinking and self-regulation. The emphasis on feedback as a dialogic and developmental process enables adaptation to different disciplinary norms, assessment types, and student cohorts.
Learning outcomes:
- Explain the process of embedding feedback in assessment design to promote student engagement
- Compare and analyse different purposes of feedback, approaches and modalities
- Discuss student responses to the feedback design
- Identify challenges of feedback design and implementation and reflect on potential improvements for future iterations of the module
References
Boud, D. & Molloy, E. (2013) Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 38 (6), 698-712.
Carless, D. (2015) Excellence in university assessment: Learning from award-winning practice. London: Routledge.
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007) The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77 (1), 81-112.
Winstone, N.E., Nash, R.A., Parker, M., & Rowntree, J. (2017) Supporting learners’ agentic engagement with feedback: A systematic review and a taxonomy of recipience processes. Educational Psychologist, 52 (1), 17-37
