Perceptions of Feedback: Myth & Reality

1. Perceptions of Feedback: Myth & Reality Jon Scott School of Biological Sciences

2. Some of the Issues • What’s the fuss about? • What is feedback? • A common understanding? • The module effect • Expectations • Utility & Utilisation

4. Learning how to eat Smarties… • Active engagement • Rewards • Common view of success and its measurement • Feedback shows what is OK and what needs changing for next time • Review of original performance in the light of feedback

5. Feedback Projects • Seeing Eye to Eye: Comparing the Perceptions of Students & Staff • ‘Quick Wins’ Campaign • Peer Observation of Feedback • Departmental Guidance • Student Engagement with Feedback

6. ‘Seeing Eye to Eye’ - Context • 85 1st year students on Biological Sciences programme • 1st semester assessments • Weekly practical report (from day 10), 5 day turn-round • Weekly tutorials - 3 essays (3 week turn-round), 1 oral presentation • Feedback cover sheet • Strengths • Areas for improvement

7. Methods • On-line Questionnaire • based on Gibbs’ Assessment Experience Questionnaire • posted early in semester 2 • Response rate: 57 % yr 1 54% yr 2 • 1st year Focus Groups • Structured interviews with academic staff

8. Student Participants • Questionnaire – 57% of yr group • Focus Groups – 25% of yr group

9. Staff Participants • 14 Module Convenors • 7 Personal Tutors (non 1st yr teachers) • 1 Student Learning Centre Advisor

10. Perceptions of Feedback Types Received (Focus Group) • Unprompted: • Comments on cover sheets • Prompted: • Comments on oral presentations • Annotations on scripts • Specifically asked: • Verbal feedback in practical classes, tutorials & personal tutors

11. Types of Feedback Given (Staff) • Written feedback – cover sheets & annotations • “They are probably less aware of the direct help they get by talking to people in lab classes, I think”, • “… interactions are the most useful in terms of students’ appreciation of things like concepts that you are trying to explain. I think just the nature of handling the number of students in 1st year practicals means we can’t give immediate feedback in terms of what the correct answer was but concepts, approach and understanding the bigger picture, they should leave with that as feedback”.

12. Quantity of Feedback

13. Quality of Feedback

14. Quality & Utility of Feedback • “Sometimes the comments are helpful but sometimes it’s comments like when you get say 60% in a practical report and they tell you it could be ‘better written’. But you’ve done all that you can to write it to the best of your ability, so it’s kind of vague, I don’t know where to improve”. • “One of my friends had a higher mark than me and she got more comments than me in the ‘places to improve’. I had nothing and was like ‘well I need to improve and you don’t so why have you got the comments?’. That’s what I was thinking”.

15. Quality & Utility of Feedback • “I got one write up which was 90% and she [the marker] was still like ‘you could improve it here or here’. It was quite a lot of comments considering it was a high mark and it was really good because it was ‘ok, that’s what I need to be doing”.

16. Timing of Feedback

17. Timing of Feedback • “…all that depends on the marker. This time we’ve had one who was sometimes taking two weeks to get the reports back. Another one has got them back on the Tuesday, having had them on the Wednesday before. So it depends really on who you’ve got.”

18. Utilisation of Feedback

19. Utilisation of Feedback • “A lot of the time it’ll depend on the mark as to how much I do look at it [the feedback]. If I’ve got a really high mark, I’ll tend to look and think ‘oh I’ve done well’ and just put it away. If I’ve got a really bad mark I’ll look and think what I’ve done wrong, why I got that mark” • “If I expect a mark, low or high, and it’s that, I don’t really read the comments. If I get a mark that’s really different from what I expected then I’ll really read the comments”.

20. Students’ Reflections on Staff Views • They probably think we don’t read it and just put it to one side.” • “I’m sure some of them think they’re just doing it and it’s a bit pointless and you’re not going to look at it anyway.” • “I suppose some of them [markers] must hope that if they bother to write something down then it gets read. But they must accept that there’s a great deal of variation between students”.

21. Staff Views • “I suspect it varies, some will read it all and come to see you to ask what it means. Others, I suspect, only read the marks and check there is not too much red ink….I think if the number reflects what they are expecting then they don’t pay too much attention to it.” • “My experience is that feedback is definitely used, it’s a very constructive thing, a useful thing and a good proportion of students are using feedback.”

22. Issues & Actions • School vs University experience • Recognition of feedback • Consistency • Timing • Content & Structure • Utility • ‘Feed forward’ • Encouraging engagement with feedback • Language

23. Actions • ‘Quick Wins’ Campaign • Peer Observation of Feedback • Departmental Guidance • Student Engagement with Feedback

25. Engaging Students with Feedback • We asked students: • Name five types of feedback you receive on your work • What is the most useful piece of feedback you have received? • Name one way in which you have used feedback to improve your learning

26. Postcard Campaign

27. “Name five types of feedback you receive on your work” (top 10 answers) Number of appearances of answer

28. % Respondents naming 5 different formats of feedback received Biological Sciences vs University Verbal Written Marks/grades Email/online Group feedback Peers % Respondents

29. Formats of feedback by year group Verbal Written Marks/grades Email/online Group feedback Peers Friendfeed % Respondents

30. “What is the most useful piece of feedback you have received?” (top 10 answers) Appearance of answer as % of all answers

31. Ways in which feedback has been used Reflect on feedback when producing next… Improved writing skills Read more to improve understanding Identify areas needed to study in more depth Improved referencing skills Feedback motivated me to improve Read through work before sumission Learnt from mistakes Guided me on revising Improved presentation skills % Respondents

32. Activities for next year include… • Standardised information on feedback in Course handbooks • Institutional guidelines on time taken for feedback to be received • Consistency in feedback • Keep up awareness of feedback as an issue – autumn term campaign working with the Students’ Union • Repeat the Peer Observation of Marking exercise in 2012-13 • Continuation of campaigns including: I love my academic

34. ‘Quick Wins’ – some ideas for departments • Working on the timing of assessments & planned marking time • Management of expectation and consistency of practice • Writing style of comments and specific ‘feedforward’ • Clarity of marking criteria & relating marking feedback to the criteria

35. ‘Quick Wins’ – some ideas for departments • Submission checklist for student completion • Encouraging students to reflect on previous feedback • E.g. inclusion of reflective paragraph detailing usage of previous feedback • Induction for students • clear explanation of role of assessment & feedback and guidance on recognising and engaging with feedback

37. Perceptions of Feedback

38. Perceptions of Feedback

39. Perceptions of Feedback