[MUSIC] In this session we will discuss one key question about feedback. What kind of feedback is likely to make a difference in student learning? Both the literature and our experience tell us that feedback may not always be effective. Sometimes teachers notice that students have not incorporated the feedback into their work. This prompts us to think critically about how feedback should be designed, when and how it should be given, and in what ways could a feedback fast engage students. In order to make decisions on the design of the feedback, let us first take a look at its major functions. Professor Dai Hounsell has summarized eight functions of feedback as shown on the screen. You can see that he also recommends the appropriate types of comments to achieve the function. For example if you want to evaluate student's performance and tell them how they have performed, you might want to use some critiques, offer benchmarks and justify the grade. You might also want to take the rubric with you and discuss with students which level they have achieved. While at other times you might want to develop an enhanced certain abilities amongst students. Then you need to provide suggestions, offer assistance, show how it is related to the work in the profession or discipline. And even recommend and to your students. It is not uncommon that you would like to achieve more than one function at one time but you could always clarify your priorities. Some teachers feel that giving feedback is very exhausting and have spent lots of time on each assignment in order to provide feedback. Unfortunately, some students still feel that the feedback has not targeted what they want to know. If you have encountered something similar, I encourage you to take a careful look at the focus of your feedback. The focus could often be determined by the major purpose of the assessment. What knowledge, skills or attitudes that you hope to develop through the assessment? That is probably your focus of the feedback as well. For example, you're going to mark an essay assignment and provide feedback to justify the grade. Let us say that the essay assignment is designed for assessing and developing student's abilities to logically present an argument, and critically evaluate a perspective. Then, you encounter an assignment that has demonstrated fairly good arguments and critical thinking, but has a poor writing style with a lot of grammar mistakes. Where would you direct your feedback perhaps, it would be better to focus on the argument first. Comments on the writing might be a minor remark. If you wish you could also tell the student honesty that the arguments are well presented but there are issues with writing. However, the focus of the feedback at this time will be on argument. Clarifying priorities is often very helpful not only because you can save time but also because it delivers a message to students regarding the main focus of the course and direct their attention to the focus. Sometimes you could also give students autonomy in clarifying the priorities of feedback. This is especially effective when you are teaching large classes. Maybe your students have been struggling with some aspect of the assignment, but you would not know it by simply looking at their output. One practice recommended by David Nicol in a literature is that you could ask students to indicate which areas they would like to hear your feedback. This can be easily done through a simple note attached to the assignment. One common complaint from students is that feedback is given too late. Sometimes students could not even recall what they had done for the assignment. This is why late feedback could become irrelevant and ineffective. But how early shall we aim for? Professor Dai Hounsell has established the term, feedforward, which encouraged teachers to shift the focus of feedback on past work, to present and future work. One possible strategy is called Draft-Comment-Revise-Submit. You could ask your students to hand a draft, a proposal outline of the major assignment, and provide comments on the draft. The comments will focus on conveying and making suggestions. Students need to revise based on your comments before they submit it for formal assessment. In this way, you'll greatly increase the relevance of your feedback because it is about the ongoing work. But, wait a minute, does that mean I have to double my workload as a teacher? I don't have time to provide feedback, both on the drops, and the formal submissions. Here is the trade off. You might need to be explicit with your students, that the comments will be only given on draft, and a grade will be given on the final work. Before you commit yourself to this practice, I recommend that you make sure there was no conflict between this practice and the institutional policy at your university. Different institutions may have different regulations on feedback. Some stipulate that early feedback needs to be provided before the fourth or fifth week of every semester while some other institutions state that written feedback should be provided to all major assignments. A more common practice is to have students present their ideas first and then hand in the report afterwards. Students are encouraged to address the feedback received on the presentation in the written report. In this way, students are more likely to pay attention to the feedback because it has an influence on the final report. The essential condition, here, is that you have to leave enough time between the presentation and the final report for students to address your comments. This scenario often happens in large classes where teachers feel it difficult to check with students whether they have grasped the basic concepts. The misunderstanding is often finally revealed in the exam, which again becomes too late to correct. This points to the benefit of using real time feedback during class. With the help of technology, one opportunity to achieve real time feedback, is to use the personal response system to obtain students' responses. Many systems can project a student's responses or votes almost real-time on the screen. You can immediately make remarks and adjust your teaching. For example, if most students get it right, you could give a simple remark and keep going. But if most students get it wrong, you might wish to go through the concept again. This can also be done without technology. Simply ask your students to raise hands could give you a sense of the progress in the class. For small classes, there are perhaps more chances for realtime and informal feedback. You can convey feedback when students are having small group discussions. You could also devise a mechanism where students can give and receive feedback from their peers. According to Professor Carless, and some other scholars, students could learn a lot when they review their peers' work. Some teachers have tried to have students work in teams. These teams present their work to other teams and receive feedback. In this session, we have discussed the major functions, the focus and the timing of feedback. We will be looking at a range of other possibilities to make feedback more impactful on student learning.
