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SUSALT17 Poster by Sarah Tait

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Getting Feedback back within the three week deadline - Make One Change SALT Guidance  

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Getting Feedback back within the three week deadline - Make One Change SALT Guidance  

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Importance of Theme "Getting Feedback Back by the Three Week Deadline"

The theme "feedback is returned by the three week deadline" is incredibly important as it ensures students' educational development and encourages students to reflect on their progress. In addition through providing feedback, students and staff begin a dialogue on the students' academic performance.
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 ensure that feedback is returned by the three week deadline ?

Give students feedback at the point of them submitting their work for assessment, even before you have started to mark their work.

Make sure students know they are getting feedback. We may know that we are giving them feedback, but it is useful to actually say so to them at the time.

Reduce the size of the pieces of work you will mark, for example by setting tight word limits on assignments. Rather than saddle yourself with a pile of 3000 word essays or reports to mark, consider having 300 word critical arguments or "interpretations".

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 been prompt" under the category Assessment and Feedback.

In the recent 2014 NSS results 66% of students at Swansea University agreed that "feedback on my work has been prompt".

Higher Education Academy

The theme is also important in regards to the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) as "feedback has been returned by the three week deadline" contributes to Areas of Activity A3 assess and give feedback to learners.

For more information on the UKPSF follow the link https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/professional-recognition/uk-professional-standards-framework-ukpsf

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Getting Feedback Back by the Three Week Deadline

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The theme "feedback is returned by the three week deadline" is incredibly important as it ensures students' educational development and encourages students to reflect on their progress. In addition through providing feedback, students and staff begin a dialogue on the students' academic performance.

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Great tweet about audio feedback, thanks Debbie Baff for signposting :)

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Importance of Theme "Giving feedback to students"

The theme "giving feedback to students" is important as it encourages students' educational development and ensures that students are able to receive criticism on their work.
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 give detailed feedback on students' work ?

Use technology to get more feedback comments to large-groups of students. For example, give students a considerable quantity of generic feedback at the point at which they submit their work for marking. Then use some of the time you save (not now having to write similar comments about common mistakes repeatedly on different students' work) to give each student specific useful feedback about their own particular work.

Use face-to-face contexts such as whole-class lectures to give students feedback, bringing the additional dimensions of tone-of-voice, body language and so on to bear on increasing students' feeling that they have indeed got detailed comments on at least some aspects of their work. Remember to remind them that "this is feedback".

Giving Feedback to Students.
Research (for example; Duffy 2013, Fry et al 2015) has confirmed what most teachers already know: providing students with meaningful feedback can greatly enhance learning and improve student engagement and achievement. Consider feedback as written or oral developmental advice on a student's performance, and that it is fundamental to the learning process. The objective of feedback is to help learners maximise their potential, raise awareness of their strengths and areas for improvement, and should include action points or targets to improve performance.

Effective ways to use feedback.
Here are five research-based tips for providing students with the kind of feedback that will increase motivation, build on existing knowledge, and help them reflect on what they've learned. Effective ways to use feedback.

Marking online with GradeMark®.
You should consider trying GradeMark® if your school or college hasn't already done so. GradeMark® is accessed through Turnitin and is an online marking tool.

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 "I have received detailed feedback on my work" under the category Assessment and Feedback.

In the recent 2014 NSS results 67% of students at Swansea University agreed that I have received detailed feedback on my work.

Higher Education Academy

The theme is also important in regards to the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) as "giving feedback to students" 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

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The theme "giving feedback to students" is important as it encourages students' educational development and ensures that students are able to receive criticism on their work. Dr Phil Race, Addressing Student Satisfaction - adopted from material published in Making Teaching Work by Phil Race and Ruth Pickford, London: Sage, 2007).

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The HEA ran a project called Student Enhanced Learning through Effective Feedback (SENLEF), it was a project funded by the LTSN Generic Centre (now Higher Education Academy) to develop a resource for practitioners wishing to improve their feedback practice to students or get some new ideas on how to enhance their current practice. The project outlines a range of case studies that you might like to read about and maybe get some inspiration. I would like to share an initiative that one of our own colleagues has just begun in order to improve her assessment and feedback procedures. The essence of the project was to address Swansea University's five year strategic plan, as one of our aims is to improve learning and teaching by making assessment and feedback a key priority. In light of the 2015 NSS results, our colleague created a new method of feedback for one of her modules. She wanted to examine the impact that providing feedback on interim assessment would have on future assessment processes such as end of year exams, and to look at how students engage with this new process to help support their learning in general. As we all know providing students with feedback information is an on-going process, one that requires great skill and understanding of our students and their learning habits.
The project is in its early stages. All students on the module were given the opportunity to participate in the study. During the interim assessment they were provided with a questionnaire requiring them to identify; what went well in the assessment, what areas they felt needed further development and to propose targets for their future development. Those students who were interested in participating in the new feedback process completed the form and submitted it with their paper. The progress that these students have made will be followed after their end of year exams later this month. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about the feedback and to see whether having such detailed feedback earlier on in the module had any impact on their success in the exam. There will be a blog post update to follow shortly and hopefully a more detailed paper will ensue.
If you have used any type of informative feedback processes, which you would like to share with colleagues, please contact the salt team so that we can spread the good work that is going on around the university.

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The HEA ran a project called Student Enhanced Learning through Effective Feedback (SENLEF), it was a project funded by the LTSN Generic Centre (now Higher Education Academy) to develop a resource for practitioners wishing to improve their feedback practice to students or get some new ideas on how to enhance their current practice.

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Understanding assessment: its role in safeguarding academic standards and quality in higher education. A guide for early career staff

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Understanding assessment: its role in safeguarding academic standards and quality in higher education. A guide for early career staff

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Anonymous marking has no significant benefits and some risks, evidence shows.  

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Anonymous marking has no significant benefits and some risks, evidence shows.  

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Teaching Tips

Most professors believe that clear and effective writing is important in all levels of psychology and in most of the professions for which we are training our students. And most professors give their students writing assignments because they believe that practice will improve students' writing. And as part of this process, most professors (and their teaching assistants) believe that their feedback will improve the quality of students' writing, so they spend countless hours providing written comments on these papers (after all, psychologists have long known that practice without feedback is futile, right?). Of these three assumptions, probably only the first one is true.

Developing effective writing skills is one of the top goals for undergraduate psychology education identified by the APA's Task Force on Undergraduate Major Competencies (2002). It is also among the top goals that I have personally for my own students. However, reflecting on 35 years of graduate and undergraduate teaching, the aspect of this job that I find the least productive and certainly the least enjoyable is grading student papers, and I know that I am not alone in this. A colleague of mine recently said, "They don't pay me to teach; I love doing that. They pay me to grade papers." But, why do we undertake this onerous task semester after semester? Is there any evidence that the feedback that we provide on student papers actually improves the quality of students' writing?

In considering this question, I have reached several harsh realizations. First, I do not think that most students - graduate or undergraduate - read most of the comments that professors provide on their papers. In fact, I think that a significant number of students read none of the comments that we provide on their papers except the letter grade assigned on page one. Second, those students who endeavor to read the comments on their paper, often (a) cannot even read the handwriting, (b) perceive the feedback to be arbitrary, (c) do not understand the point of each comment, and (d) do not have the opportunity to see how each suggested comment would actually improve the quality of their paper. Consequently, when learning from this process does occur - if ever it is at a very superficial level, making it less likely that improvements in writing ability will result.
Suggestion #1: Provide Feedback in a Manner That is More Likely to be Understood and Utilized by Students
Several suggestions follow from these realizations, suggestions that will increase the utility of grading student writing assignments and at the same time make this process easier and more efficient for professors. These suggestions also apply to a wide range of writing assignments from topical position papers to APA style research reports.

It is time to abandon the academic artifact of providing students with handwritten comments on their papers. This practice should go the way of the typewriter. For the reasons specified above, this process is just not effective. I have developed my own "top 10 list" of issues with student papers. I derived my list by systematically analyzing the modal comments that I have written on student papers over many years. These are not simply grammatical violations that I find offensive, but at a more superordinate level, these are actual barriers to the clear presentation of ideas in writing.1 These points are as much about clear thinking as clear writing. My own list is specified in the box below. Now, as I read each paper, I simply mark the paper with the letter codes that correspond to the feedback that I want to provide at appropriate points. For example, rather than writing, "The transition here is not clear. Think about what you just said, the point you want to make next, and then use clear language to articulate the transition between these ideas," I simply write " T. " Although I make other comments on student papers in addition to those in my "top 10 list," the large majority of the remarks that I make continue to be from this list. I distribute my list with each course syllabus. This alerts students early to the dimensions that they should consider important in writing their papers and provides them with a reference so that they can decode my remarks later. Thus, students get clear detailed feedback about how to improve the quality of their writing, feedback that they are less likely to perceive as arbitrary and more likely to incorporate in the future. 2

This shorthand method of providing feedback helps circumvent another problem. Providing detailed feedback on student papers is effortful, time consuming, and tedious. Consequently, the amount of feedback that students receive in handwritten remarks from professors is likely to vary by (a) how many papers the professor has just read and how many remain in the stack, as well as (b) knowledge of whether each particular student is likely to consider the feedback. Unfortunately, students who perform well are likely to get more specific feedback than those who do not. Streamlining the process improves the uniformity of the feedback provided on all papers.

Providing students with useful feedback - maybe even perfect feedback - is worthless unless they are going to read this feedback and then apply it. Toward this end, when possible, it is recommended to have students rewrite each paper, and turn in the first draft along with the revision. Only then can we have confidence that they have read and utilized the feedback provided on draft one. Requiring students to rewrite their paper in light of the feedback provided on the first draft communicates that you are serious about having them improve the quality of their writing.

Let's be honest, when a student writes a paper for a class, they typically write one draft shortly before the paper is due, sometimes proofread this draft, and then turn it in. This process provides students with a limited writing experience that constrains what they are likely to learn about the practice of writing. On the other hand, the process of revising a paper requires students to rethink the organizational structure of their paper and how each paragraph fits within that organizational structure. It also requires them to play with language, to think about alternative ways of articulating a point, and then to decide which of these alternatives is preferable and why. This is the experience that is more likely to produce polished writing, the type of writing that will be required of them in a professional setting.
Suggestion #2: Assign Shorter Papers
There are several ways of working out the logistics of grading two drafts of the same paper. I require that students hand in two drafts of the same paper, and I assign a letter grade to both drafts. However, I grade the first draft with a high criterion - there are few As. When students turn in their revision, they need to attach their first draft to the revision so that I can assess the extent to which they have successfully incorporated the feedback provided on draft one. In computing each student's final grade, I let the grade on the revision replace the grade on their first draft. This serves to motivate students to take the review process seriously. How can faculty efficiently read two drafts of each paper? The next suggestion addresses this point.

When students are assigned a class paper, they are often told that the assignment is a "10-page paper." In their minds, the project is one in which they have to do "something" that fills 10 pages. However, in light of the fact that more writing is not usually better writing, and more writing results in more grading time, writing assignments should be defined by the purpose of the project not the page limit. And, students should be told that their goal is to fulfill this purpose as succinctly as possible, certainly taking no more than, for example, 5 pages. The premier publication in any field of science is the journal, Science, and Science Brevia articles are restricted to 800 words...including references. The Gettysburg Address is only 272 words, and the point is both clear and beautifully crafted. The reality is that brevity will be encouraged in most of the professional writing that our students will do after college. There is practical utility in teaching students to write succinctly.
Suggestion #3: Have Students Proofread Each Others' Papers
A shorter writing assignment requires students to have a point and without wasting space, to structure their paper so that the support for this point is clear and convincing. Rather than pondering, "How can I fill 10 pages?" this assignment challenges students to think, "How can I best structure my paper to present and support my point?" If students do not know what the point of their paper is, it will be harder for them to obfuscate this in a 5-page paper than in a 10-page paper. As a result, shorter assignments are not only quicker for faculty to read, but with shorter papers it is easier to discriminate bad, good, and great papers.

I require that prior to the due date for each paper, each student has another student in the class proofread their paper.The proofreader's name is to be indicated on the paper when it is submitted.This requirement improves the quality of writing with no additional demands on the professor. It serves several additional purposes as well. First, it encourages students to break the habit of writing a paper the night before it is due. Second, it gives every student experience with the review end of the writing process. Identifying places where another student's writing can be improved enhances each student's sensitivity to the qualities of good writing. Third, this process communicates to students that writing is a public process, not just a private one. Students need to learn to feel comfortable having their work read by peers both in college and in the professional world thereafter. If the first draft of a student's paper is seriously deficient, I require the student to meet with a tutor in the University's Writing Center for help with the revision and to provide evidence of having done so when they turn in draft two.

To facilitate this process, two class sessions prior to when their draft is to be submitted to me, I have students bring a hard copy of their paper to class and then randomly pair students who are to exchange and proofread each others' papers by the next class meeting. In that next class session, I allocate class time for students to meet in pairs and provide each other with detailed critical feedback. Students are then expected to use this feedback in the revision of their paper.
Suggestion #4: Establish These as Department-Wide Practices
But students do not make good proofreaders unless they are trained to do so. It is a good investment of class time to allocate a few brief sessions to teaching proofreading skills - skills required in proofreading a student's own paper as well as classmates' papers. This involves first, setting one's criterion at the right level. Students are often surprised to learn that proofreading a paper means doing line-by-line editing, not just making summary comments about the paper at the end. A proofreader needs to learn that comments such as those in the attached "top 10 list," are typically required in every paragraph of a paper and, in some paragraphs, on most sentences. The best way to train students on proofreading is to provide the class with the same sample paper and have them each proofread and mark up the paper as a take home assignment. Then, project the paper on the screen in front of the class and mark it up yourself, explaining your comments as you proceed. This will not only let your students know where their proofreading criterion should be set, but it will communicate where your criterion is set - after all, you will be grading their paper. This exercise also familiarizes students with the shorthand code in the "top ten list."

If faculty find these suggestions useful, it would be helpful to students if these suggestions could be applied uniformly department-wide. This is especially relevant for suggestion #1 - using a consistent shorthand code for providing feedback to students. Whether you use my "Top 10 List of Writing Issues" provided below, or one developed among faculty in your own department, it would be useful if students could be exposed to the same method of feedback in all classes in the department. This would help them realize that there is a uniform discrete list of issues that define good clear writing and would focus their efforts on these issues. When students receive detailed comments on their papers, they are often overwhelmed by the feedback, and this feeling prevents them from incorporating the feedback when they work on future papers. This would be less likely to occur if all written papers in each department were assessed on the basis of a uniform list of concerns. And this would ease the faculty demands in grading student papers as students became more familiar with the shorthand code for feedback.

In addition, regarding suggestion #3 above, if students are required to proofread other students' papers in all classes in their department, they will become more proficient at this task. Consequently, improvements in student writing across classes would be cumulative, with no extra faculty grading time required. Through some minimal curriculum coordination, students could be familiarized with the department's "Top 10 List of Writing Issues" and proofreading could be taught in one of the first writing-intensive courses required of majors, such as Research Methods. Thereafter, less class time would be necessary providing proofreading directions and clarifying faculty expectations.

Faculty are more likely to assign class papers and to provide useful feedback to students if this process in not an onerous one for them and if they see that it results in improved students' writing skills. The suggestions in this paper help lighten the workload for faculty grading student papers and at the same time sharpen students' writing skills - a win-win situation.

1 To insure that students also learn the more subordinate principles of good writing, I encourage assigning Strunk and White in every class. We can no longer assume that most students learned even the basic principles of grammatical writing in high school.

2 There are other new methods of providing feedback to students in a form that they are more likely to utilize. For example, software is available online that allows faculty members to do a video capture of a student paper and then talk through their ideas (for example, see http://www.jingproject.com). This allows faculty members to provide more nuanced feedback than can be provided with handwritten comments. However, it is not clear that this method is an efficient way to provide feedback on every page of each paper submitted in a class.

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Grading Student Papers: Reducing Faculty Workload While Improving Feedback to Students

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Most professors believe that clear and effective writing is important in all levels of psychology and in most of the professions for which we are training our students. And most professors give their students writing assignments because they believe that practice will improve students' writing.

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Suggested Activity

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Have you used Audio feedback on Grademark? Share your thoughts and feelings here.....

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Have you used Audio feedback on Grademark? Share your thoughts and feelings here.....

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No, according to this survey. However, QUALITY of feedback is the key to engagement / acting upon it.

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Use Blogs as a Feedback method? Share your thoughts and feelings here.....

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Use Blogs as a Feedback method? Share your thoughts and feelings here.....

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SALT Seminars - '7 Characteristics' explained

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Seven Characteristics of a Good University Teacher

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Factors influences responses to feedback 

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Factors influences responses to feedback 

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'Lenses' and 'Filters' must be considered when engaging in dialogic feedback .

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Factors influencing responses to feedback

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What do learners say and do in response to feedback?

Giving feedback to learners does not “magically” improve
their skills or boost their grades without those learners acting
(Boud & Molloy, 2013a)

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Swansea University Curriculum Plan

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Recent Study: Emotional Responses to Feedback......

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Feeling feedback students emotional responses to educator feedback

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INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCES OF FORM OF DIGITAL FEEDBACK ON LEARNERS’ ENGAGEMENT WITH THEIR FEEDBACK

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INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCES OF FORM OF DIGITAL FEEDBACK ON LEARNERS’ ENGAGEMENT WITH THEIR FEEDBACK

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The University is committed to delivering high quality research across its range of disciplines.

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These are the slides from March's '7 Characteristics of Good University Teaching' Audio Feedback seminar, delivered by Sandy Goerge and Pete Hanratty from SU's Centre for Academic Success.

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Go Beyond....