Limitations of corrective feedforward : a call for resubmission practices to become learning-oriented

As part of well-planned formative assessment, feedback can help students to understand the demands of a summative assessment task, evaluate their current level of performance, and then find ways to close the gap. As students take a more active role in this process, their feedback can be thought of as becoming ‘feedforward’ since it serves a specific purpose and drives student action. As the value of formative assessment design is becoming emphasised in higher education, summative assessment practices need to be re-evaluated in terms of how well they support learning as opposed to just supporting valid judgements of student performance. However, despite significant discussion of Assessment for Learning and Learning-Oriented Assessment, resubmission practices are largely overlooked even though resubmission can be a key event in whether students are retained. As part of a learning support department’s effort to provide effective feedback on academic writing, students referred for support were offered two types of feedback: one was simple correction, the other was in-depth dialogic feedback which followed “feedback for learning” guidance (Askew and Lodge 2000). Student engagement with the two types of feedback was analysed by looking at the changes students made to their work and feedback from their subject tutor (including the resubmission grade). The tutor’s feedback was also analysed to see if any intentions for the resubmission task could be inferred. Results suggest that corrective feedback is highly efficient in enabling students to pass resubmissions and that more in-depth feedback is much less efficient. This paper highlights some of the ways in which resubmission practices can unknowingly encourage surface approaches, and suggests some ideas for how learning support can better align with subject tutors to enable resubmission to become more learning-oriented.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The University in Dissent, by Gary Rolfe, London, Routledge and the Society for Research into Higher Education

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Exploring students’ concepts of feedback as articulated in large-scale surveys: a useful proxy and some encouraging nuances

Surveys asking Higher Education students about feedback tend to find similar results: feedback should be prompt, specific, understandable and regular. Efforts to improve the feedback experience therefore emphasises that feedback be more frequent, detailed and turnaround times reduced. However, indications that students misunderstand key phrases in the questions or have limited conceptions of feedback have also led to suggestions that these surveys should not be as influentialas they currently are. To explore students’ understanding of feedback in greater detail, 613 students completed a 35-item survey about a specific time they received feedback during a work-based learning placement. Results indicate that students typically saw feedback as straightforward communication where an exper ttells them what to do. However, principal component analysis of the survey responses indicated a pattern of responses in which students tacitly hold a more sophisticated understanding of feedback.Their patterns of response directly challenge many of the ways that feedback provision is currently monitored, suggesting better ways to evaluate and improve feedback provision. Curiously, these patterns of response had a close relationship with the standard questions used in the UK’s National Student Survey. Results therefore suggest that this national survey is still a robust measure of satisfaction with feedback, but learning how to improve the feedback experience requires asking different questions.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Exploring students’ concepts of feedback as articulated in large-scale surveys : a useful proxy and some encouraging nuances

Surveys asking Higher Education students about feedback tend to find similar results: feedback should be prompt, specific, understandable and regular. Efforts to improve the feedback experience therefore emphasises that feedback be more frequent, detailed and turnaround times reduced. However, indications that students misunderstand key phrases in the questions or have limited conceptions of feedback have also led to suggestions that these surveys should not be as influentialas they currently are. To explore students’ understanding of feedback in greater detail, 613 students completed a 35-item survey about a specific time they received feedback during a work-based learning placement. Results indicate that students typically saw feedback as straightforward communication where an exper ttells them what to do. However, principal component analysis of the survey responses indicated a pattern of responses in which students tacitly hold a more sophisticated understanding of feedback.Their patterns of response directly challenge many of the ways that feedback provision is currently monitored, suggesting better ways to evaluate and improve feedback provision. Curiously, these patterns of response had a close relationship with the standard questions used in the UK’s National Student Survey. Results therefore suggest that this national survey is still a robust measure of satisfaction with feedback, but learning how to improve the feedback experience requires asking different questions

English language teacher preparation

English language teacher preparation has a relatively short history in Scotland’s universities. This chapter outlines some of the contributions made by Scottish institutions and academics to English language teaching globally, including during the very early stages of English becoming a global language. Commercial influences on English language teacher education are outlined as an explanation for why programmes diverged from Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provision from the 1960s, including pressure from short-course teacher education and rising precarity of English language teachers. This chapter concludes with some encouraging work from foreign language teaching and Gaelic-Medium instruction, showing how English language teacher education may be able to rebuild connections to ITE to engage with the contemporary linguistic diversity in Scotland’s classrooms

What is the purpose of feedback on reassessment essays? A language tutor’s perspective on students’ approaches to resubmission of failed assignments

Students improving a failed assignment need feedback on necessary improvements, but whether or not those improvements then lead to learning is a highly varied experience. This paper discusses feedback from writing centre tutors to three students who were referred for language support after failing an assignment. Feedback was given in two stages: one was simple correction to enable the assignment to pass, the other was in-depth dialogic feedback which followed “feedback for learning” guidance (Askew & Lodge 2000). The separation of feedback offered a way to explore student engagement with reassessment practices and whether they focused on just doing enough to pass or sought to improve their learning. Results suggest that many reassessment practices overemphasise student effort and minor proofreading issues. When looking at how tutors responded to resubmission efforts, there was a strong suggestion that a long-term learning focus was not reliably rewarded: tutors are just as susceptible as student to over-emphasising the need to ‘get over the line’. If students are to effectively learn from improving failed attempts, feedback must engage with more than just what students need to do to pass. Academic writing support must therefore engage with course tutors to help students to see resubmission as a learning opportunity and type of formative assessment by better aligning feedback and reassessment expectations and practices

Explicit and implicit internationalisation: Exploring perspectives on internationalisation in a business school with a revised Internationalisation of the Curriculum Toolkit

Business and Management Schools have long been at the forefront of internationalisation, realising that international perspectives are crucial in any business environment. Business Schools compete globally for the best staff and students, seeing them more as assets than customers. As a result, internationalisation is infused throughout the university life and its programmes. However, internationalisation in its practical aspects can be understood differently depending on how subtly internationalisation is infused throughout a programme and how effectively it engages with inclusive pedagogy rather than just curriculum content. This study explores what internationalisation looks and feels like in practice on four programmes in a business school according to students and faculty using a reflective toolkit. What emerges is a clear picture of agreement among students about explicit aspects of internationalisation, such as case studies or considering the views of different nationalities represented by their peers. However, it is only staff and a few students who recognise more tacit forms of internationalisation. This study highlights the potential for internationalisation and recommends adaptations to a reflective toolkit to further facilitate dialogue between staff and students. It is also argued that discussing examples is valuable for students, particularly for articulating the benefits of internationalisationdiv_BaM16pub5200pub