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

Abstract

. Telephone: 0151 2312805.Clarity, consistency and communication: using enhanced dialogue to create a coursebased feedback strategy.This article examines the outcomes of a study across four discipline areas in order to develop course-based assessment strategies in closer co-operation with students. Second year students (n=48) from different disciplines were engaged in two phases of activity-orientated workshops. Phase one sought their perceptions of feedback. Phase two saw students design a proposed strategy to present to the respective staff teams. We discuss the emerging themes which appeared to be very similar amongst this diverse cross-section of students: a lack of faith in marking consistency; the need for clear guidelines and criteria; the greater use of positive feedback language and a close association with tutors. The emergence of strategies specific to each course is discussed along with the alignment of the outcomes of this approach with pedagogic knowledge. It is suggested that enhanced dialogue enabled staff and students to develop a common understanding, and gave impetus to improving, assessment feedback practices. Outcomes recommended here include changes to practice such as the benefits of a team approach to feedback development, the content and style of feedback; developing the usefulness of feedback for future work and; the need for teams to periodically revisit staff development in this area.

“I am wary of giving too much power to students:” Addressing the “but” in the Principle of Staff-Student Partnership

“…The staff were sent the students' ideas about their course-level feedback prior to the co-creation workshop. They then met with the students and, between them, they created the programme feedback strategy (see Nixon et al, 2016). The overall process resulted in a programme-level feedback strategy for each of the four programmes, written by staff and students.…”

Mediating factors in the provision of lecturers’ written feedback to postgraduate taught students

“…Jonsson, 2012;Li & De Luca, 2014). One solution that has been put forward is the introduction of audio, rather than written, feedback (Lunt & Curran, 2010), but to take effect this would need to be an accepted and approved practice in circumstances where time allocations for feedback may be written into institutional guidelines (Nixon, Brooman, Murphy, & Fearon, 2017). Thus the individual has limited capacity to enact change with regard to this category of constraint.…”

“…In association with this function much of the literature on this has included recommendations on how academics might amend their practices in order to achieve this (e.g. Nixon, et al, 2017;Rae & Cochrane, 2008;Robinson, Pope, & Holyoak, 2011;Williams & Smith, 2017a). There is, however, also a growing acknowledgement in the more recent literature in this area that there is more than one group of stakeholders in the feedback process whose needs should be taken into account.…”

University Preparation Programs in Australia: International Student Perspectives

“…Particularly important is the ability of students to understand the nature and purpose of university assessment tasks (Blair, 2017;Nixon et al, 2017). Nixon et al (2017) found that a large number of students tended to perceive themselves as recipients of feedback instead of active learners in it, and therefore, they were less proactive in taking the initiative in utilizing the feedback they received for further improvements. Such studies highlight the need for teachers and institutions to ''provide more training to students to enhance their assessment and feedback literacy in order for students to appreciate the value of assessment and feedback activities'' (Sun et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2020).…”