As I sit here in my office at home, I am thinking that I am so very lucky! Why, because I have just passed my late 50’s medical, I am sitting in my office at home, and I am enjoying the challenges of my third career, which is in education and specifically as Senior Lecturer within the University of Lincoln’s Work Based Distance Learning (WBDL) team. However, before moving on, I would like some help please; I have just ‘hung’ a new door to my office, [see picture below] but my dear wife tells me I have done this wrong, and she will not tell me what the problem is! If anyone can tell me what is wrong, there will be a substantial reward; answers on a post card please!
So, what is ‘Hurry on Sunday’ all about; well for me it is all about what challenges, advice, support and a whole bombardment of interesting interaction with my students, that will be populating my inbox in the coming week; and a cannot wait! I am not sorry for saying challenges, as there will undoubtedly be some; there will also be some sensitive conversations, and also some difficult decisions to make, all of which go to make up the role of a tutor. However, in this short (ish) blog, I would like to consider the giving of feedback and the importance of appropriated assessment. Firstly, I think that it is extremely important to consider the ‘student context’. There are some underpinning factors that we should consider; such as you might find that some of your students are often ill prepared for academic study, and many students’ experience difficulties due to inadequate academic writing skills. It is also likely that some students with lower perceived skills in academic writing, might have lower motivation for the course. Lastly but not least, and particularly pertinent to WBDL, is that students typically spend less time on their studies when working full-time! So, we as WBDL tutors will need understand what the context of our students is, and how this might affect those students a tutor is responsible for.
Thus, I would suggest that it is also very important to understand why we need to formally assess our students, and how we do this. The why is simple, as we need an output, but how we do this is somewhat more complicated; which brings me back the ‘Hurry on Sunday; see what tomorrow brings’. As tomorrow will certainly bring some surprises and challenges, which we all expect and thrive on! Moving forward, the how will generate challenges, conversation, maybe some dispute; all of which is part of the DNA of working with students and gaining their trust. The students will have signed-up for their degree, for various reasons; maybe an exit strategy, or to be eligible for promotion, or just to ‘test the academic water’! So, we as educators need to understand their needs and be mindful of how they are going to achieve these.
We as practitioners all know that there is a requirement for both formative and summative assessment, but prior to this is the most important aspect of our role/job; that of providing feedback and feedforward commentary. Firstly, let us discuss feedback, which is the main interactive component between students and tutors in a WBDL context. This process should be used to motivate and improve performance, should take on an interactive stance, which will encourage students to ‘explore’ unlimited academic resources, to help create understanding and the processes of creating a critical stance. Without this guidance, students [especially studying at level 6] might/will struggle, and importantly could fail to complete the course, or be disappointed and dejected with their performance; all serious issues that we must guard against. Therefore, the process of providing feedback/feedforward must not be underestimated; although a little dated I echo the comments of Woo and Reeves (2008, 18) who suggest that learning is viewed primarily as a social product, aided by the process of conversation, where discussion and negotiation is paramount. This of course, does not always have to be written correspondence, as the current digital era provides various platforms to personalise feedback with face-to-face communication, which in my opinion is the ‘new way forward’. I predict that such platforms will become a re-requisite in the months to come and will start to revolutionise and personalise student/tutor relationships. To try and add some credibility to some of my arguments thus far; I would ask you to read the citation below, which resulted in me being awarded the 2017 Students’ Union Feedback Award. Not wishing to boast, but the narrative, goes some way to support my argument above;
“Tim stepped into the breach when my tutor was unwell. This was the beginning of a period where he really helped me to keep me focused. His dedication, availability, and friendly nature helped me to achieve my best mark for any module to date. He inspired confidence within me, by giving snippets of advice, with uplifting and kind words. Tim was happy to have submission after submission forwarded to him so he could give feedback ‘little and often’, which really helped connect me with the module. During periods of leave, he would email me before, and after sometimes during to inspire and motivate. All this was from a man who was not my tutor but turned into the one I needed”.
I am very proud of that award, and there are elements of the story which I have not provided. But I do feel that it lays down a kind of ethos; we within WBDL have and should be proud of.
To conclude, I would like to discuss Summative feedback; but to recap, from my perspective the main purpose of formative feedback is ‘to guide and accelerate students’ learning by providing them with information about the gap between their current and the desired performance. Whereupon, summative feedback provides tutors and students with the information about the attainment of knowledge, will normally result in a grade, and provide a commentary about the overall performance, and evaluate the students’ performance against the overall assessment criteria.
Final Thoughts: How to approach Feedback:
- Be careful not to give an overwhelming amount of feedback as this can be a de-motivator.
- Check the student understanding of Feedback, especially formative feedback
- Be sure to identify positive aspects of the work.
- Written feedback should not dwell on the negatives. The areas of development should be identified and solutions to move forward should follow.
- Use terminology consistent with the Assessment Criteria.
- Use in-page comments via Turnitin.
- No need to pick-up every mistake; a single comment can be applied to the whole document.
- Bring in in-page comments together in the final overview of the work.
- Summative feedback should be viewed as an opportunity to inform a student’s learning and to justify the grade given.
Tim Collett
Senior Lecturer WBDL
29 November 2019
Reference List:
Woo, Y. and Reeves, T.C. (2007) Meaningful interaction in web-based learning: a social constructivist interpretation. Internet and Higher Education, 10(1) 15-26.