A little bit of background on what we felt the challenges to student and staff engagement are.
*Timeliness – Large class sizes and workload make providing feedback students quickly very difficult *Q&Q - The problem of what to focus on – Making a sizeable dent in the mountain of marking or taking longer to give in-depth advice. *We all know how important formative assessment is but how do we get students to engage and modular framework means there is little time. *The age old problem!
We all know how important feedback is to the learning process. Good quality feedback can really motivate students and help them improve. That is of course, if they engage with the feedback you provide.
On the ASSEt project we are encouraging greater use of what we’re calling feedforward – that is explicitly making clear to students the assessment criteria before they start work on an assignment. FF can reall focus students’ attention on what’s required of them but it can also help them engage more with your feedback if they can see where they are meeting the set criteria and where they didn’t do quite so well. Another important aspect of ff is making clear to students how feedback on one assignment will help in subsequent work as often they feel that once an assignment or module is over the feedback is obsolete.
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power if Feedback. Review of Educational Research , 77, 81-112. ‘ the most effective forms of feedback provide cues or reinforcement to learners; are in the form of video-, audio-, or computer-assisted instructional feedback; and or relate to goals.’ One of the aims of the ASSET project is to build on previous research that suggests there are benefits in delivering ff and feedback in video and audio formats. Tone and expression can be more engaging for students and it can accommodate different learning styles.
Great expectations of ICT: how HE institutions are measuring up. Research Study conducted for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) – Report June 2008 by Ipsos MORI. First year students. There are understandable reasons for this. Gimmicks etc.
These are the outcomes we hope to achieve by developing and making available the ASSET resource.
ASSET works by facilitating what we’re calling the ‘feedback loop’
University log-in University, Module and My playlists....
An important part of the project however, is the research into possible benefits of o audio and video feedback and feed-forward. This research will include a pilot study of schools using the ASSET resource. Centre for Applied Linguistics (earlier pilot study) Fine Art Chemistry, Food Biosciences and Pharmacy International Foundation Programme Real Estate and Planning Law? Now, the CALS pilot is taking place at the moment. Much earlier than our other pilots which all begin in the Autumn term 2009.
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