Giving feedback to students is often mutually unsatisfactory: it requires a great deal of time, yet it isn't always accessed. Can we do something better? This presentation was used to kick off a practitioner workshop back in 2014.

1. Feedback and
Feed-forward
Chris Grant and Richard Farr

2. Contents
✤ Our least favourite activity
✤ Evidence of a problem
✤ Who reads their feedback?
✤ Why don’t students access their feedback?
✤ Feeding forward
✤ Discussion Points

3. What’s our least favourite
part of the job?

4. Evidence of a Problem
✤ Winter and Dye (2004)... 46% of staff reported that more than 20% of
student work was uncollected by the end of a semester.
✤ Cohen and Spencer (1993)... “Although each paper received detailed
comments, ranging from argumentation to spelling, over half of the
students never picked up their papers ... That pile of uncollected
papers was a sure sign of student alienation from their writing, and a
frustrating disincentive for continuing to provide detailed feedback.”
✤ Pears et al (2013)... sought to minimise wasted effort associated with
giving feedback, based on Biggs’ (1999) principles of constructive
alignment.
✤ Blair et al (2013) identify late feedback as a common complaint.

5. But... who actually reads their
feedback?
The ‘tick’ icon
identifies students
who have viewed their
document since
marking

6. Full student activity reports can also be viewed

7. Good students access their
feedback... right?

8. Tutor’s comments in Grademark

9. Common Problems Seen in
Students’ Work
✤ Misunderstanding or misinterpretation – not addressing the problem
that was set
✤ Errors of emphasis – distribution of effort or proportion of words was
different to what was sought: an “R.T.F.Q. error”
✤ Basic study skills problems (style, referencing, language, structure)
✤ Poor logic or contradictory
✤ Lack of supporting evidence
✤ Too descriptive, not critical and therefore inappropriate to level

10. The Paradox
✤ The biggest complaint is that feedback comes too slowly to be
useful...
✤ ...but many students never look at the feedback we give them.
✤ It appears their interest ends at “What mark did I get?”
✤ What are marks for?
✤ What is feedback for?

11. Is feedback more than simply a
justification?
✤ Rank students in rough order of competence.
✤ The main feedback is the grade.
✤ Beyond that... is feedback a pre-emptive strike against students
complaining about their grade?

12. National Student Survey...

13. Whatever happened to cyclic
learning?
(Kolb, 1984)

14. Two different views.
What are you paying for?
“a degree
qualification”
“the opportunity
to study”
✤ Wants feedback that can be
applied in future work.
✤ Wants to get better over
time.
✤ Passion for the subject.
✤ Wants a ‘good mark’.
✤ Less interested in activities
that don’t count towards the
final grade.
✤ Shallow, or strategic
learning choices.

15. We don’t know why students
don’t make use of feedback!
✤ Technical difficulties?
✤ Awareness?
✤ Too busy?
✤ Modularisation?
✤ Don’t understand feedback
received?
✤ Don’t value feedback
received?
✤ Don’t know how to do better?
✤ Elapsed time?
✤ Don’t care?
✤ Other reasons?
✤ A survey of students’ feelings
about the feedback process
was inconclusive.

16. Feed-forward
✤ Why wait until mistakes have been made?
✤ Avoid disappointments; build confidence.
✤ Avoid misunderstandings.
✤ Address the limitations of the off-campus model in particular.
✤ Simplify the task of writing feedback, because less needs to be
explained.

17. Feeding
forward
✤ Excerpt from a
briefing for students
explaining what is
sought...
✤ Explains the terms
that commonly occur
within feedback.
✤ Why not circulate it
when the assignment
is set?
✤ Not spoon-feeding!

18. Feeding Forward...
A series of videos offered a discussion of what
staff look for when grading student work

19. Lessons Learned
✤ Some of our weaker students don’t actually know how to access their
feedback.
✤ A huge variety of feedback formats...
✤ Grademark (various options)
✤ Physical marking on paper-based documents
✤ MS Word attachment – standard departmental template
✤ MS Word attachment – of the tutor’s own devising
✤ Video feedback
✤ Meeting with tutors
✤ Students don’t always understand that they’re getting feedback.

20. Workshop Discussion Points
✤ If much of the feedback we are currently providing goes to waste...
✤ ... and its creation gives rise to one of the major complaints (late
feedback)...
✤ What else can be done?
✤ Faster, cheaper, better...?

21. Findings from the workshop
✤ Since this presentation was the basis for a workshop, it invited discussion rather
than offering conclusions. Some aspects of that discussion were as follows:
✤ Several participants already practiced various forms of “feed forward”, finding
that it improved student attainment and retention.
✤ Video feedback was of some interest.
✤ Plagiarism remained one of the major causes of failed assessments – despite
students being ‘fed forward’ (i.e. invited to check their document for similarity in
advance of submission).
✤ Use of standard elements such as templates and rubrics within Grademark
permitted additional feedback and time-saving.
✤ One member of staff proposed that students should be invited to state the form
in which they would like their feedback. For example, as a short meeting instead
of in written form.

22. ✤ More articles from Richard Farr can be found on
Capacify, the Sustainable Supply Chain blog:
✤
http://capacify.wordpress.com
✤ On Twitter: @Capacified

23. References
✤ Biggs, J. (1999) What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning, Higher Education
Research & Development, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 57–75
✤ Blair, A., Curtis, S., Goodwin, M. and Shields, S. (2013) What Feedback do Students Want?
Politics, 33(1), 66-79.
✤ Cohen, A. J., and Spencer, J (1993) Using writing across the curriculum in economics: Is taking
the plunge worth it? Journal of Economic Education, 24, No. 3, 219-229.
✤ Kolb D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall
✤ Pears, A., Harland, J., Hamilton, M. and Hadgraft, R. (2013) What is Feedback? Connecting
Student Perceptions to Assessment Practices, Proc. 1st International Conference on Learning
and Teaching in Computing and Engineering, March 21st - 24th, Macao
✤ Winter, C., & Dye, V. (2004) An investigation into the reasons why students do not collect
marked assignments and the accompanying feedback, CELT Learning and Teaching Projects
2003-4, University of Wolverhampton. Online available:
wlv.openrepository.com/wlv/bitstream/2436/3780/1/An%20investigation%20pgs%20133-141.pdf
(accessed 17/5/14)