“Feedback has been defined as a ‘process through which learners make sense of information from various sources and use it to enhance their work or learning strategies’ - Carless & Boud 2018
PROJECT MISSION
A challenge for the provision of effective, targeted feedback is large class sizes with multiple assessments which occur within the limited timeframe of a college semester.
Therefore, the purpose and focus of this BALI co-creation project was to plan the development of a tool to assist in ensuring that those most in need of further assistance understanding and making sense of their feedback are provided with this support.
Team Members:
- Karolína Janusová - Student partner
- Charlotte Lok - Student partner
- Aisling O’Gorman - Lecturer, Process, Energht & Transport Engineering, MTU Cork
- Con Burns – Lecturer, Sports, Leisure & Childhood Studies, MTU Cork
PROJECT MOTIVATION
The 'Is anybody listening' team looked at ways to encourage students to notice their development of knowledge, skill and understanding so that they integrate feedback from assessments more in their studies.
PROJECT RESULTS
The team developed a number of innovative ideas both from the lecturer and student perspective regarding feedback.
- One idea included the use of a bouncing ball animation which could be used to indicate to the lecturer how well feeback was understood by students. As is presented in the visual here, learners would receive feedback on a given assignment and would be invited to respond using a bouncing ball tool, to show how well they understood the feedback provided. Please see our example Bouncing Ball Animation Storyboard.
Figure 1 Visual of how bouncing ball tool will work
Reaction Level 1
If a student was very unclear and/or did not agree with the feedback.
Reaction Level 2
Where there are elements in the feedback provided which a student would like further support/ explanation on.
Reaction Level 3
Where learners fully understood and agreed with the feedback provided, i.e. no further support/ explanation required.
This visual response would allow a lecturer to provide further explanation and support and prioritise learners most in need of further guidance. The bouncing ball tool could be used by learners to respond to marking and feedback at a macro or micro level. When it is used at the macro level, it would allow the lecturer to quickly identify learners who need further guidance. If it is used at the micro level, it would allow the lecturer to determine what elements within an assessment need targeted feedback and/or additional supports.
- The following are examples of:
- Incorporating Student Feedback into Marking Sheets. Here a learner can resubmit the marking sheet (i) highlighting areas where additional dialogue or support is required and (ii) areas where they are clear on/agree with the feedback/marking of that element.
|
Description
|
Marks |
Marks Available |
Student Feedback |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Overall Quality of Poster |
12 | 20 |
|
|
Design and Layout |
|||
|
Logical information flow, main points explicitly labelled, easy to read, well thought out, careful editing of content. |
|||
|
Graphics |
|||
|
Original, graphics are attractive, relevant and of high qality - inform viewer mreo effectively than text, figure legends or captions have been use to guide the viewer |
2 | 5 | |
|
Balance |
|||
|
Sufficient white space, test and graphics are evenly balanced |
3 | 5 | |
|
Writing |
|||
|
Clarity, precision of expressions, economy of words, no spelling mistakes/grammatical errors |
4 | 5 | |
| 21 | 35 |  |
Figure 3 Incorporating student feedback into marking sheet
-
Using Feedback Studio in Turnitin via Canvas. Annotations dropped onto the learner’s paper are linked to the marking scheme associated with the assignment. The learners are clear on how the feedback links to specific elements being assessed.
future works
Recommendations for future work from this project include the development, piloting and evaluation of the bouncing ball tool to facilitate and support quality interactions between lecturers and learners. This tool could be embedded into platforms currently in use in MTU namely Turnitin and Canvas. A second recommendation would be to conduct a survey of both students and staff within the University requesting them to share practices in assessment feedback which they find work particularly well. This could be used to inform and guide practices across the University.
