Programme:

Andrew Reeve (Politics) - BFSS Faculty Engagement with the ITLR - What (if anything) happened next?

This presentation explains what the Faculty did to develop the discussions held during the Faculty Engagement with the Institutional Teaching and Learning Review. A Working Party was tasked to consider recommendations which had been made to the Faculty about joint degrees, personal tutoring & personal development, internationalisation, and employability. The Working Party’s response is reported on the slides; an update on the progress of the proposals was given verbally, with contributions from the audience.

Jane Medwell (Institute of Education) - Sharing feedback practices

This presentation shares some of the ways feedback is given in the Institute of Education. In giving feedback we try to emphasis usefulness for the students, so that feedback can contribute to improvements in performance. Feedback in WIE addresses traditional social sciences assessments, such as essays, through electronic annotation of script and summary feedback pro formas. Feedback in other, professional, areas, includes observations and profiles completed by mentors and link tutors in schools. All forms of feedback are moderated.

Grier Palmer (WBS) - Improvements and Innovations in Feedback at WBS 

Grier’s presentation provides an overview of feedback practices at WBS, with a focus on the training of doctoral students to enable them to provide appropriate feedback and to support undergraduate students in developing academic writing skills.

Russell Stannard (CAL) - Using technology for feedback and reflection

Russell talks about how he has moved from using JING for feedback to using JING and other tools for reflection. He is becoming more and more interested in reflection as he believes that students of the 21st Century will need to regularly upgrade their skills and continue their learning and therefore developing the ability to become self-reflective and to be aware of their own development is crucial.

He first began to work on the idea of using screen capture for feedback in June 2006. The work generated lots of interest and various reports and articles have been written on it. The most recent piece was published in Norway. He also wrote a fairly recent piece in the Guardian.

All the links in Russell's PP presentation work, so you will have the opportunity to see examples of the original feedback idea and the more recent work he has done around reflection.

Justin Greaves (Politics) - DSEP, Personal Tutoring and Feedback in PAIS

In this presentation Justin outlines his role of Director of Student Experience and Progression (DSEP), within the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS). This role blends the adminstrative with the academic - Justin has a research background, teaches with PAIS and provides academic support to students. The presentation outlines key innovations PAIS are making in terms of the personal tutor system - although some are simply recommended good practice and others are yet to be confirmed as firm departmental policy. Justin also raises some issues relating to his experience of students and feedback (which includes feedback to students as well as feedback from students). One of his central points is that technology can potentially be time-saving as well as promoting the student experience'

Jane Bryan (Law) - Feedback/Feedforward - experiences from the Law School

This presentation by Dr Jane Bryan details the efforts made by the Law School to investigate Law students' experience and perception of feedback in an effort to shape department policy and practice. In March 2012, 293 Law students completed questionnaires which asked what they understood by the term feedback, what they found useful and what they would change. The study found that students viewed feedback narrowly as the written feedback on their assignments rather than feedback in the fuller sense of comments from staff in office hours or seminars or in answer to questions. The study also found that students particularly valued the formative aspects of feedback and used it to improve future work. Students appreciated a mix of different forms of feedback: specific comments on their work, general comments on the task and offers of one-to-one consultations. The Law School have responded to this investigation by reconsidering department policy and practice, and reshaping the standard form used to give feedback on assignment.

Timothy Dodsworth (Law) - Feedback – the wider context

After the results of the NSS survey were released the question arose how the university might be able to provide better feedback. There are undoubtedly areas that could and should be improved. However, there may be the possibility of utilising already existing practices to improve students’ perception of what feedback is and how that feedback is administered.

The argument is threefold. First, by making students aware of the fact that office hours, email support and seminars compliment the written feedback they already receive and that thereby the feedback is not limited to the a single piece of paper, may already improve the perception of what feedback is. Secondly, the improvement of feedback in a department is an important step but the evidence shows that students are unaware of the process. Advertising the fact that the University or the relevant department is improving their feedback is just as important as the improvement itself. The final point relates to the perception of priority of students’ work. Feedback will be read in a different light if tutors provide a more student focused support network.

Overall, small changes in relation to existing practices or the labelling of these practices as feedback may well help improve the students’ perception of their feedback.

A really useful event in relation to ideas on how to develop effective practice in feedback.

I thought the Showcase was very worthwhile both in immediate content and in developing contacts and connections.

I thought the event worked
very well and I was delighted to be a part of it.

I enjoyed being involved, thank you!

This event was immensely valuable for me in a number of ways...

I did not expect this event to be as useful as it was and the setting "out of the run of the mill" made it more so....Thank you!

Really useful! Reflexivity was my buzz word for the day, although I quite liked feedforward too!!