Importance of Theme “Making Feedback Work”
The theme “making feedback work” is important as it encourages students’ educational development and ensures that students are able to receive criticism on their work.
From the 2015 Conference …
Hazel McMurtrie: Dialogic Feedback
Dr Phil Race, Addressing Student Satisfaction – adopted from material published in Making Teaching Work by Phil Race and Ruth Pickford, London: Sage, 2007).
How to make feedback work ?
- Keep asking students about how your feedback is helping them. For example, if you are using a self-assessment pro-forma to get your students to reflect on their course work at the point at which they submit it, you could include a question or two along the lines “Which part of my feedback on your last assignment helped you most to understand something which you had not quite mastered at that point ?” and “What feedback would you particularly find useful on your present assignment ?” or “Which part of this assignment was least clear to you ?”
- Use whole-group sessions to find out exactly what your students don’t yet understand. For example, ask them to write their responses on post-its to the starter “The most important thing I don’t yet understand is…” Then analyse what the most frequently occurring responses are, and go over these aspects with the whole class. Then when marking their related work, make sure that you include feedback comments which relate to any remaining problems with these aspects of the syllabus.
The theme is also significant in relation to the National Student Survey and the Higher Education Academy Fellowship.
National Student Survey
The theme has been taken from the National Student Survey question “feedback on my work has helped me clarify things I did not understand” under the category Assessment and Feedback.
In the recent 2014 NSS results 65% of students at Swansea University agreed that “feedback on my work has helped clarify things I did not understand”.
Higher Education Academy
The theme is also important in regards to the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) as “making feedback work” contributes to Areas of Activity A3, Teach and/or support learning.
For more information on the UKPSF follow the link https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/professional-recognition/uk-professional-standards-framework-ukpsf
