I had few discussions with colleagues about the feedback forms. We have agreed few years ago that the form, except the marking criteria, will have three more sections (free text):
(a) what you have done well,
(b) what you have not done so well, and
(c) what you can do to improve,
It seems that there the distinction between the two is not so clear to the teaching staff and also to students as well. As a matter of fact, "Things you haven't done so well" and "Things what you can do to improve" are quite different.
(a) what you have done well,
(b) what you have not done so well, and
(c) what you can do to improve,
It seems that there the distinction between the two is not so clear to the teaching staff and also to students as well. As a matter of fact, "Things you haven't done so well" and "Things what you can do to improve" are quite different.
"Things
you haven't done so well" refer to the issues, mistakes, misconceptions
etc. a student has exhibited in this particular assignment. These are
the things that probably affected marking too. So, this is feedback
for the current work. But the unit is most probably over by the time feedback is given; so, the
students do not have the chance to improve their work in this particular unit
anymore. What can we do to help the student improve in a future piece
of coursework?
Out of "Things the student hasn't done so well",
a lecturer can identify few issues that are recurrent issues in any coursework.
For example, these could be referencing, citation, structure,
argumentation, critical analysis or English or anything else. And here
is where "Things what you can do to improve" comes in. In this section, we need to
identify and probably prioritise by stating the most important (not all)
issues that the student should focus in order to perform better in
future assignments. So, this is feedforward for future work.
Obviously,
there might be some overlapping in the sense of "You have to improve
all the things that you haven't done so well in this unit", but bearing
in mind that the former refer to the past while the latter
to the future, we all now should see the difference.
May I also remind you about a relevant post by Ana Vivas on Action Feedback in which she referred to a self-reflective exercise the students do in order to explicitly state how they used feedback they got in previous assignment for later submissions.
It is also interesting to note that Alex Psychogios and Les Szamosi are currently publishing research on feeding-forward related to managers in SMEs in our region! Their research indicates that traditional feedback mechanisms need to integrate feeding-forward and that informal feedback methods better in enhancing organizational change.
May I also remind you about a relevant post by Ana Vivas on Action Feedback in which she referred to a self-reflective exercise the students do in order to explicitly state how they used feedback they got in previous assignment for later submissions.
It is also interesting to note that Alex Psychogios and Les Szamosi are currently publishing research on feeding-forward related to managers in SMEs in our region! Their research indicates that traditional feedback mechanisms need to integrate feeding-forward and that informal feedback methods better in enhancing organizational change.
Petros Kefalas
IFDLT
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