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Involving students in feedback
• Peer feedback
The last two decades have brought a seismic shift in the provision of feedback. Traditionally, feedback was seen as a 'gift' (Askew and Lodge, 2000) — something presented by the teacher to the student, with students cast in the role of relatively passive recipients or even bystanders. But there is now widespread recognition that students must play a more direct and active part in feedback, if it is to make a real difference to the quality of their learning.
For the Quality Assurance Agency (2006), encouraging students to reflect on their own performance as well as get feedback from others is seen as worthwhile, and especially so "when opportunities for self-assessment are integrated in a module or programme" (QAA, 2006). Skills in giving and receiving feedback are also prized by employers (see e.g. Jaques, 2000) and seen as an indispensable 'graduate attribute', helping to prepare students for learning in everyday life and work beyond university (Boud and Falchikov, 2006) . And in contemporary research and scholarship on assessment, student engagement in the interchange of feedback goes hand in glove with excellence in learning (see for example, Nicol, 2007, 2009; Black et al. 2003). As Royce Sadler, one of the most influential thinkers in this field, put it two decades ago, students have to be able to judge the quality of what they are producing, by coming to hold "a concept of quality roughly similar to that held by the teacher" (Sadler, 1989, p. 121).
This section of the website explores various pathways to greater student involvement, the two most direct of which are peer feedback, where students give feedback to (and get it from) their fellow-students, and self-generated feedback. Two other options, where the feedback itself may be less visibly interwoven, entail students working collaboratively, by co-revising assignments and through editing and redrafting.
For further possibilities for enhancing students' engagement with feedback, see the section Interacting with students. FURTHER READING
Askew, S. and Lodge, C. (2000) Gifts, ping-pong and loops - linking feedback and learning. In: Askew, S. (ed.) Feedback for Learning. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp.1-18
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. & Wiliam, D (2003) Assessment for Learning: putting it into practice. Buckingham: Open University Press
Boud, D. and Falchikov, N. (2006) Aligning assessment with long-term learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 31 (4) pp. 399-413
Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Sampson, J. (1999). Peer learning and assessment, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 24, 4, 413-426. Examines some of the main assessment issues in connection with peer learning (including group assessment, peer feedback and self-assessment) and suggests ways in which the benefits of this approach can be maintained.
Falchikov, N. (2005) Improving assessment through student involvement: practical solutions for aiding learning in higher and further education London/ New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Jaques, D. (2000) Learning in Groups: A Handbook for Improving Group Working. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Liu, N. and Carless, D. (2006) Peer feedback: the learning element of peer assessment. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3), pp.279-290.
Nicol, D. (2009) Transforming Assessment and Feedback: enhancing integration and empowerment in the first year. Mansfield: QAA.
Nicol, D. (2007) Principles of good assessment and feedback: theory and practice. Paper from the REAP International Online Conference on Assessment Design for Learner Responsibility, 29-31 May 2007.
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (2006) Code of Practice for the Assurance of Academic Quality and Standards in Higher Education: Assessment of Students. Mansfield: QAA.
Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science,18 (2), 119-144. http://www.springerlink.com/content/102905/
Schon, D. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Peer feedback
There is abundant evidence of the benefits of providing students with opportunities to give feedback to, and receive it from, their fellow-students students (see e.g. Falchikov, 2001; Miller, 2008; Orsmond, 1996, 2000; Liu and Carless, 2006). Peer feedback can help students to develop that all-important appreciation of what counts as high-quality work in the discipline or subject area (Sadler, 1989), while at the same time enabling them 'to take an active role in the management of their own learning’ (Liu and Carless, 2006). Peer feedback can be sometimes be quicker and more accessible than tutor-provided feedback, and does not usually give rise to the anxiety or even antipathy – on the part of students as well as staff – that is often associated with the kinds of peer assessment that result in the award of a mark or grade (Liu and Carless, 2006).
Peer feedback can take many different forms (Hounsell, 2008):
• students can give one another feedback on drafts or assignment plans, e.g. by making evaluative comments and offering suggestions for improvement;
It is likely to work best when responsibilities are equitably shared (e.g. each student gets and gives feedback), when the feedback can be put to good and immediate use on a real task, and where students are familiar with ground-rules that foster constructive and courteous feedback. David Boud's example of such ground-rules has been widely emulated and recently updated (Assessment Futures, 2009). Opportunities for peer feedback can also be combined with the use of exemplars or on-display learning and with various strategies for interacting with students about feedback.
CASE EXAMPLES
ASKe(2007). Making peer feedback work in three easy steps! Oxford: Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange, Oxford Brookes University.
Assessment Futures (2009). Guidelines for giving and receiving feedback. Sydney: University of Technology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Barwell, G. and Walker, R. (2009) Peer assessment of oral presentations using clickers: the student experience. Proceedings of the 3rd HERDSA Annual Conference.
Bloxham, S. and West, A. (2004). Understanding the rules of the game: marking peer assessment as a medium for developing students' conceptions of assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(6), pp.721-733.
Brownrigg, A. Positive interactions: developing students' learning through group poster work. Signpost Leaflet 15. Northumbria University: CETL in Assessment for Learning.
Brunsden, V. (2007) Patchwork texts as a form of assessment. Higher Education Academy Psychology Network Newsletter, 44. pp. 4-5.
Cartney, P. (2008) Using peer formative assessment with social work students.
Falchikov, N. (2002) Unpacking' peer assessment. In Schwartz, P. and Webb, G. Assessment (Case Studies of Teaching in Higher Education Series): Case Studies, Experience and Practice from Higher Education.pp. 70-77 London: Kogan Page Stylus Publishing.
Gukas, I., Miles, S., Heylings, D. and Leinster, S. (2008) Medical students' perceptions of peer feedback on an anatomy student-selected study module. Medical Teacher 30(8), 812-814
Hanrahan, S. and Isaacs, G. (2001) Assessing self- and peer-assessment: the students' views. Higher Education Research & Development 20(1), 53-68
Hughes, C., Toohey, S. and Velan, G. (2008) eMed-Teamwork: a self-moderating system to gather peer feedback for developing and assessing teamwork skills. Medical Teacher 30(1), 5-9
Hughes, I. (2006) Peer assessment: what's it all about? Open University: Challenging Perspectives on Assessment.
Ljungman, A. and Silén, C. (2008) Examination involving students as peer examiners. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 33(3), 289-300
Miller, V. (2008) The incorporation of peer assisted study sessions (PASS) into the core curriculum of a first year Chemistry module. In Irons, A. Enhancing Learning through Formative Assessment and Feedback. London: Routledge.
Morrow, L. (2006) An application of peer feedback to undergraduates' writing of critical literature reviews. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 1(2), 61-72.
Orsmond, P. (2004) Self- and peer-assessment: guidance on practice in the Biosciences. The Higher Education Academy: Leeds.
Orsmond, P., Merry, S. & Reiling, K. (1996) The importance of marking criteria in the use of peer assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 21(3), 239-251. The article compares student peer and tutor marking of five individual criteria in Bioscience. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/02602938.html
Peel, D. (2009) Self- and peer-assessment for Built Environment students. CEBE Briefing Guide No.14. Higher Education Academy Centre for Education in the Built Environment.
Price, M., O’Donovan, B. and Rust, C. (2007). Putting a social-constructivist assessment process model into practice: building the feedback loop into the assessment process through peer review. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 44(2), pp. 143-152.
Reed, R. and McKie-Bell, F. (2008) Peer-assessment and feedback in a first year Bioscience module. In Irons, A. Enhancing Learning through Formative Assessment and Feedback. London: Routledge.
Topping, K., Smith, E., Swanson, I. & Elliot, A. (2000) Formative peer assessment of academic writing between postgraduate students. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(2), 149-170. This article examines formative peer assessment of academic writing and analyses the type and amount of feedback given by peers and teachers in Psychology. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/02602938.html
van den Berg, I., Admiraal, w. and Pilot, A. (2006). Designing student peer assessment in higher education: analysis of written and oral peer feedback. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(2), pp.135-147.
FURTHER READING
Chin, P. (2007) Peer Assessment. New Directions in the Teaching of Physical Sciences 3, 13-18.
Hounsell, D. (2008) The Trouble with Feedback: new challenges, emerging strategies. TLA Interchange Issue 2. http://www.tla.ed.ac.uk/interchange/spring2008/hounsell2.htm
Liu, N. and Carless, D. (2006) Peer feedback: the learning element of peer assessment. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3), pp.279-290. Self-generated feedback
"Self-generated" feedback ... doesn't that sound like a contradiction in terms? Surely one of feedback's raison d'etre is that it's a view from another standpoint - and ideally a more expert and less disinterested one?
Well yes, but however much we might prize the outsider view, we can't rely solely on others' judgements if we're to become more skilled and knowledgeable in a given field. We also need a growth-spurt in our own capacity to judge and evaluate, to identify (in any piece of work-in-progress ) what's of appropriate quality and what needs further attention. And we can wait while this capacity evolves, in its own time, or we can try and speed up the process by consciously nurturing it.
Self-generated feedback can help to kindle this kind of 'informed judgment' (Boud and Falchikov, 2006). Typically it takes one of two forms:
(i) gaining practice in taking assessed tasks, where students can use the experience to get diagnostic information on how well they're doing overall, and what their specific strengths and weaknesses are. Examples would be:
• self-testing on multiple-choice or other tests, which can be linked to online feedback on performance, as in online revision and electronic feedback • using past exam papers, e.g. as a test of the success of revision or as practice in writing answers under timed exam conditions • take-away problem sheets, e.g. in engineering, where there is an opportunity for self-review prior to, say, later tutorial discussion
(ii) actively developing a grasp of criteria and standards, not just through becoming familiar with assignment criteria and standards as outlined in course handbooks and websites, but by gaining experience in applying them to an appropriately demanding task or instance of assessed work. Examples would be:
• self-appraisal by a student of a pre-submission draft of an assignment, evaluating achievement against each of the set criteria
In either case, self-generated feedback is likely to be of most value when there is an authoritative reference-point or benchmark against which students can check out and calibrate their evolving powers of judgment. This could be achieved via, for instance, a model answer, a 'crib-sheet' of answers to sample exam or test questions, or in some automated online form. It could also come in the form of peer feedback (e.g. where having worked individually, a group of students came together to pool their efforts) or as the next stage in a more formal assessment process. Three examples of the latter would be elective feedback; richer benchmarking information from the tutor (as in the Mulder example); or students being invited to record their own evaluation of their achievement alongside an assignment submission (as in the Day and Anderson examples).
CASE EXAMPLES
Anderson, R.D. (1996) Structured Feedback with Limited Self-Assessment . In: Hounsell, D., McCulloch, M. and Scott, M. (eds) The ASSHE Inventory: Changing Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education. Sheffield: UCoSDA. p.90
Brown, N. (2007) Self-assessment - more effective than tutor feedback? Centre for Bioscience Bulletin No. 22, p.8.
Day, A. (1996) Student Self-Assessment as an Aid to Marking Assignments. In: Hounsell, D., McCulloch, M. and Scott, M. (eds) The ASSHE Inventory: Changing Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education. Sheffield: UCoSDA. p.88
Johnstone, R., Patterson, J., and Rubenstein, K. (1998) Improving Criteria and Feedback in Student Assessment in Law. Sydney/London: Cavendish Publishing, p.80, Example 1.
Mok, M.M.C., Lung, C.L., Cheng, D.P., Cheung, R.H.P. and Ng, M.L.(2006) Self-assessment in higher education: experience in using a metacognitive approach in five case studies. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 31(4),pp.415-433. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/02602938.html
Mulder, R. (2007) Use of a scoring matrix to provide detailed feedback on performance. From the website: Enhancing Assessment in the Biological Sciences, www.bioassess.edu.au
Norton, L., Clifford, R., Hopkins, L. Toner, I. and Norton, WB. (2002) Helping psychology students write better essays. Psychology Learning and Teaching 2(2) 116-126.
Orsmond, P. (2004) Self- and Peer-Assessment: Guidance on Practice in the Biosciences. The Higher Education Academy: Leeds.
Pain, R. & Mowl, G. (1996) Improving geography essay writing using innovative assessment. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(1), 19-31.
Taras, M. (2001) The use of tutor feedback and student self-assessment in summative assessment tasks: towards transparency for students and for tutors. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 26(6), 605-614.
Taras, M. (2003) To feedback or not to feedback in student self-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28(5), 549-565.
Thompson, D. and Howard, M. (2009) Re:View online criteria-based assessment. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney. Co-revising assignments
In many approaches to peer feedback, the key shift from convention is that the students take on the mantle of the tutor, providing comments on work which (whether in draft or final form) has typically been compiled and written elsewhere, in private and independent study. It is therefore the product of that individual work which is the focus of feedback, which is generated largely after-the-fact and separated from the act of production.
By switching the focus of peer activity to co-revising, however, feedback can be interwoven into the very activities that the students undertake — collaboratively evaluating a draft, deciding where and how it needs to be revamped, drafting the needed revisions, and checking that the revision has been a success. Feedback has therefore become contemporaneous rather than delayed, and so intrinsic rather than extrinsic, an almost seamless feature of the task on which the students are collaborating. There is also the potential, as with any collaborative assignment by students, for rich learning about one another's ways of working in the discipline or subject area, i.e. about strategies for production, as well as what makes for a good end-product. In other words, co-revising can be seen as both an alternative to peer feedback in its more typical guise, and as offering even greater potential for students to develop as disciplinary practitioners-in-the-making.
In practical terms, what could students co-revise? It could be an anonymous piece of work chosen by the tutor, or something the students have already drafted together (as in the Nicol case example). In either case, even a short piece of text could work well. A concise text also lends itself to other refinements. One is a design studio or 'atelier' approach (c.f. Schon, 1987), where the tutor moves around the groups while they are actively co-revising, offering his or her expert comments as a form of supplementary feedback. The other is that having worked in small groups on their co-revisions, groups then compare what they have produced with one another. And as the Baxter case-example also shows, co-revising is feasible online as well as face-to-face.
CASE EXAMPLES
Baxter, J (2007). A Case Study of Online Collaborative Work in a Large First Year Psychology Class. From the REAP International Online Conference on Assessment Design for Learner Responsibility, 29th-31st May, 2007. /tabid/266/Default.html?link=266&tabid=120
Kim, M. (2009). The impact of an elaborated assessee’s role in peer assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(1): 105-114. Editing and redrafting
The key difference between co-revising and editing and redrafting is that in the latter case, the students work individually on the assigned draft rather than in a peer group. It may therefore be easier than co-revising to implement where contact time or space for groupwork is limited. And although the feedback that arises from editing-and-redrafting is therefore self-generated rather than benefiting from peer interaction, the resulting redrafts could nonetheless become the focus for subsequent peer discussion (and thus peer feedback) in, say, a tutorial or practical class.
It would also be feasible to divide the activity into two stages (each involving individual work followed by peer feedback in groups) by focusing first on what needed revising, and then on the revisions actually attempted.
CASE EXAMPLES
Covic, T., and Jones, M. K. (2008) Is the essay resubmission option a formative or a summative assessment and does it matter as long as the grades improve? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33.1, pp. 75-85.
Handley, K. Szwelnik, A., Ujma, D., Lawrence, L., Millar, J. & Price, M. (2007). When less is more: students’ experiences of assessment feedback. Paper presented at the Higher Education Academy Annual Conference, July 2007.
Harvey, J. How am I doing? Using peer reviews to improve assessment. Signpost Leaflet 10 . Northumbria University: CETL in Assessment for Learning.
Montgomery, C. Practice makes perfect: working towards a summative essay through drafts and edits. Signpost Leaflet 8. Northumbria University: CETL in Assessment for Learning.
Prowse, S., Duncan, N., Hughes, J., and Burke, D. (2007) ‘…do that and I’ll raise your grade’. Innovative module design and recursive feedback. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(4), 437-445.
Taylor, C. (2007) Feed-forward to improve academic writing. Centre for Bioscience Bulletin No. 22, p.8.
Unsworth, K. and Kauter, K. (2008) Evaluating an earlybird scheme: encouraging early assignment writing and revising. Higher Education Research and Development 27(1), pp.69-76. |
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