A scholarly approach to solving the feedback dilemma in practice

Abstract

It is clear from the literature that feedback is potentially the most powerful and potent part of the assessment cycle when it comes to improving further student learning. However, for some time, there has been a growing amount of research evidence that much feedback practice does not fulfil this potential to influence future student learning because it fails in a host of different ways. This dilemma of the disjuncture between theory and practice has been increasingly highlighted by the UK National Student Survey results. This paper uses a model of the assessment process cycle to frame understandings drawn from the literature, and argues that the problem with much current practice resides largely in a failure to effectively engage students with feedback. The paper goes on to explore how best to effectively engage students with assessment feedback, with evidenced examples of feedback strategies that have successfully overcome this problem.

Clarity, consistency and communication: using enhanced dialogue to create a course-based feedback strategy

“…A key finding is that a course-level strategy is desirable as it provides consistency and connectivity so as to encourage students to engage with, and utilise, feedback that staff spend a considerable amount of time creating. Seeing the issues through the eyes of students tended to focus our suggestions for practice on how to transfer well-established pedagogic suggestions (O'Donovan, Rust and Price, 2015) into practice, via modular and course-level strategies, rather than individual pieces of work. This confirms the findings of previous studies that the value of the student voice in curriculum development may be to provide a valuable lens through which to implement pedagogic knowledge (Brooman, Darwent and Pimor, 2015).…”

Misunderstandings and mismatches: The collective disillusionment of written summative assessment feedback

“…In some senses this is 'brave' (O'Donovan et al, 2015); it is certainly controversial, and justified not through engagement with learning theory and the contemporary canon of literature on assessment feedback, but through attending to a local, contextualised, evidence base and paying attention to the kind of work the (local) representation of feedback does.…”

“…Considering whether such a partnership-based approach is 'brave' (O'Donovan et al, 2015), whether it demonstrates courage in the face of danger is intriguing. Responses will differ according to the space(s) we occupy.…”

“…Engaging with students in research and also engaging students within the design, conduct, and evaluation of our research is central to improving our research, our practice(s), and our research practice(s). It is also a way in which genuine, contextualised, evidence bases, from which 'theoretically sound approaches [to assessment feedback]' (O'Donovan et al, 2015) can be adopted.…”

“…Yet, on the other hand, neophyte (and sometimes, not-so-neophyte) learners sometimes perceive that the presence of feedback, in and of itself, is sufficient to bring about improved performance (Beard et al, 2014;O'Donovan et al, 2015), even though many students report never reading the (written) feedback that they receive (Weaver, 2006). Theoretically, feedback is considered as one of the most powerful influences on student growth, development, learning, and achievement (Rae and Cochrane, 2008); in practice it has become contested and multiperspectival in increasing measure, in parallel with the massification of higher education.…”