It’s Time to TESTA Change: effective feedback/ feed forward Fiona Roberts, Kate Goodhand, Helen Vosper, Janine Bolger Faculty of Health and Social Care

Background Assessment – the single biggest driver of student behaviour (Ramsden 1992) Extensive work to enhance assessment and feedback practices (Beaumont et al 2011) NSS scores...

The action: TESTA Transforming the Experience of Students Through Assessment Higher Education Academy ‘Change Academy’

Project Objectives: Investigate student views on the different methods of summative feedback Establish how students use summative feedback To assess the quality of feedback and its potential for feed forward Identify any areas for enhancement in the provision of feedback, use of feedback and alternative methods that could be applied efficiently and effectively.

How? Course Audits Assessment Experience Questionnaire Student Interviews Categorisation of feedback Staff interviews Faculty project 16 undergraduate courses Potentially 1620 students

AEQ Results Quantity and Quality of feedback Use of FeedbackClear Goals and Standards TESTA Mean (n=246) TESTA Range Faculty Applied Social Studies Health Sciences Nursing and Midwifery Pharmacy and Life Sciences

Audio Feedback “The audio feedback, that was really good because you got it as it were directly from the horses mouth,... you got what she meant with the tone that she used as well as what she was actually saying..." "I thought it was 9 minutes of quality stuff that you could use because it was individualised...." “... people will tend to talk more than they write I think” "when you’re given so much feedback it can be a bit daunting on what to focus on first and that..." “...well for a start, if you wanted to get to a specific part of it you had to listen to the whole recording...”

Written Feedback “…if there’s a comment written on an essay, there’s only a few words isn’t it? It’s in a margin or it’s just something’s been highlighted or asterisked or something...” “….some of them have really poor hand writing and so it’s really hard to actually decipher what they actually said and then it’s not helpful either.”

Other Methods “….for the exams you get to see the transcript and got to see the comments that were in it….you’re rushed a bit to really have to really get your head back into what you had been writing...” “ all we got was our grade, the mean mark for the class and the standard deviation. That was all.” "well she went through every question... in the exam and had the main points that should have been included in your answer up on a PowerPoint...you could see where you were awarded marks... because it certainly showed me the areas where I was waffling (laugh)..."

Specificity of Feedback "I remember I did an assignment and I got em an E for my referencing and still to this day I’m not sure why I got an E for my referencing cause in a previous assignment I submitted I got an A for my referencing and I’d followed the same... " “he just said they weren’t SMART, but I know what SMART is and to me, I kind of hit every part of SMART so, specific, measurable, but he just said SMART. Why didn’t he say, ‘oh they weren’t achievable’ or ‘they weren’t timed’?’’ " he went through all the areas where I could have done better, where I could have added in stuff and that. Which, it’s grand saying you could have added in stuff but you’re working with a word count as well. It’s like, I would like to know how I would have been able to fit all this in like,..."

Feedforward " just that the acute care one was great. It was just… it was constructive, like your strengths and weaknesses... it was kind of related to clinical practice as well in terms of, ‘once you finish university and if you’re working within this acute care setting, you might want to do this’…it wasn’t just specific to the coursework, it was your actual career progression." "last summer I got my feedback for another assessment which I, you know, they were all Ds and I thought ‘no I’m going to sort this out’. I waited till the summer, I went through everything, used the audio feedback...and worked on it..." “yeah if I if I get a B a A or a B I’m happy days, I listen to it but its done, if I fail it or it goes to get a much lower mark I could listen to it a lot more”

Discussion Fine balance too much/too little Accessability Impact – content and delivery method Variable quality -specificity - feed forward potential

The future... Consideration of value of moving to typed instead of hand written feedback Investigate other methods eg ‘iannotate’ Consider role of 1:1 meetings Examination feedback Focus on ‘how to’

Thanks to: The Higher Education Academy, York DELTA and Our Dean! Project Assistants Students and staff who participated