1. What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 What is Feedback? Connecting Student Perceptions to Assessment Practices James Harland School of Computer Science & IT, RMIT University james.harland@rmit.edu.au Joint work with Arnold Pears (Uppsala), Margaret Hamilton, Roger Hadgraft (RMIT)

2. Why? What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012  Arnold Pears here for semester 2, 2012  Margaret, James, Roger, Arnold got talking …  Paper submitted in late November to LaTiCe  Talk about ideas now before semester 1, 2013

3. The ‘F’ Word … What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012

4. Turing and Ordinal Logic14 th September, 2012

5. Intro to IT (RMIT) What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 Semester 1, 2012 CES results: 9: ``The teaching staff normally give me helpful feedback on how I am going in this course’’ 13: ``The staff put a lot of time into commenting on my work’’ Question12345Score 91515231564% 131421221156%  Worst and third-worst overall scores  (2 nd worst was `This course prepares me for working in a global or international setting.’) (!!)

6. Intro to IT (Uppsala) What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012  Similar course, similar results  Evaluation of 2.7 on a scale of 1 to 5 in 2011  ``Don’t have so many small exercises, everything is very confusing and unrelated. I would personally have spent more time on the assignments if they had been fewer in total and larger, which would have resulted in me learning more.”

7. So Where Now? What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 Graham Gibbs: Students only value feedback if it helps them with the next assessment item  Few students seek to see their exam  Sounds like something we could test (!)  Get some base data and do some measurements …  Have access to data at least two universities on two continents

8. Principles What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 Articulate Gibbs’ idea into 4 principles (PeHaHaHa ) 1. Learning activities should be linked to a high-level goal 2. Assessment activities should be constructively aligned and should build on one another 3. Feedback should directly enhance student outcomes on subsequent tasks 4. Feedback should be interactive

9. Intro to IT What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 3 Assignments: Progressive production of a video  Assignment 1: Image and audio transformations  Assignment 2: Find two options for a new computer for your grandmother  Assignment 3:  Answer 12 reflection questions  Research some interesting IT topic

10. Intro to IT What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012 1.No explicit links to high-level goals (except maybe 3...) 2.Not constructively aligned 3.Feedback on one task does not directly enhance subsequent outcomes 4.Feedback was sent via WebMark (highly non-interactive )

11. Intro to IT (plans for 2013) What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012  Larger problem broken into three pieces  Drop assignments 1&2, larger scale for research report  4 questions + draft report  4 more questions and 2 nd draft  4 more questions and final report  Feedback to include general guidance on good report writing and technical tips for interesting ideas  ‘Topic is too broad’  ‘Focus on this point’  ‘Add a diagram’  Do more research!  ‘I recognise this as copied from Wikipedia …’

12. Intro to IT (plans for 2013) What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012  Interactivity  Academic discussing expectations beforehand  Students working in groups in tutorials  Informal review by other students  Peer review as part of assessment  Formal interview with staff member  Staff get a better understanding of ‘where the students are’

13. Plans for 2013 What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012  Re-design assessments at RMIT and Uppsala according to the 4 principles  Re-measure outcomes on feedback  See improvement  Instance of action research  Submit another paper

14. Questions? What is Feedback?14 th December, 2012