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Formative interaction in online writing: making disciplinary expectations explicit
About the book: How to provide appropriate feedback to students on their writing has long been an area of central significance to teachers and educators. Feedback in Second Language Writing: Context and Issues provides scholarly articles on the topic by leading researchers, who explore topics such as the socio-cultural assumptions that participants bring to the writing class; feedback delivery and negotiation systems; and the role of student and teacher identity in negotiating feedback and expectations. This text provides empirical data and an up-to-date analysis of the complex issues involved in offering appropriate feedback during the writing process
Active engagement with assessment and feedback can improve group-work outcomes and boost student confidence
This study involves evaluation of a novel iterative group-based learning task developed to enable students to actively engage with assessment and feedback in order to improve the quality of their written work. The students were all in the final semester of their final year of study and enrolled on either BSc Zoology or BSc Marine and Freshwater Biology at a mainstream UK university, but the findings of this research can be generalised to a wider student body. The main findings are that in a group work context, individual students can use provided assessment criteria to accurately assess the work produced by their group and that their ability to produce and recognise work of a higher quality improves as a result of a social dialogue around self/peer assessment and self/tutor generated feedback. The study also reveals that producing poorer work over-assess and those achieving the highest marks under-assess. Over-assessing students focus to a greater extent upon the superficial deficiencies in their work, whereas under assessing students are more likely to focus on more significant issues. High-achieving under-assessing students lack confidence in their own abilities, but believe feedback provides a confidence boost
The Art of Refusal: Promising Practice for Grant Makers and Grant Seekers
The full report of this research project provides the findings of a study of communication experiences and practices, at the point of grant refusal, among selected grant making and grant seeking organisations. Its context was the frustration and disappointment being experienced by many grant seekers in a period of enhanced competition for funding, alongside the multiple pressures facing grant makers, in responding to grant seekers' needs and in meeting their own range of obligations. The overall purpose of the research was to support learning and improvement in policy and practice among grant makers and grant seekers. A summary of the findings from the qualitative research undertaken for the project is provided at the end of this paper. In this practice paper, we focus on the direct learning question posed by the research - 'what promising practices in grant refusal communications may be identified from grant makers' and grant seekers' perspectives on their experiences?' Many respondents during the research process highlighted what were, for them, preferred and promising practices in communicating and managing grant refusal among grant seekers and grant makers. These were sometimes their own approaches and sometimes those which they had observed and welcomed. These insights, examples and possibilities are now distilled and presented below as promising practice learning and action points, illustrated by anonymous quotations taken from our research respondents
Designing an e-tutoring system for large classes: mixed-method research
This study aimed at assessing the perceptions of 167 teachers about the tutoring system
adopted in an online training course involving teachers from 20 Schools of Sesimbra, SetĂșbal
and Palmela counties. The course, called âDistributed Knowledge with Web 2.0â, was
officially certified as a blended learning modality, with the duration of 50 hours, 41 of which
occurred online in two editions, the first in February and the second in July of 2012, each one
of them involving respectively 82 and 85 teachers, divided in four classes with about 20
trainees each. This blended learning course was designed at producing educational materials
in digital format, and included autonomous and group activities, knowledge sharing and
reflection. A learning environment, supported by the Ning platform, was set up. At the end of
the course, the trainees answered to a pencil and paper survey, in order to evaluate the
adopted online tutoring strategy. Additionally the traineesâ final reports contained evidence of
how the trainees assessed the tutoring model component of the course; both the survey and
the reports were the basis for this research. The results show that the teachers who attended
the two course editions disclosed very positive perceptions about online learning, a modality
they consider adequate to their current professional status and conditions. The trainees also
showed their intention of, in the future, opting for blended training arrangements. Future
developments of this study involve a content analysis of the tutorâs posts, in order to
understand more accurately the tutorâs messages characteristics, in their social and cognitive
dimensions
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