1. Maximising learning from feedback: three approaches Devin Sapsford George Zorinyants Richard Carr

2. Feedback: Minimising Cost/ Maximising Benefit Devin Sapsford, Cardiff School of Engineering

3. Who am I… Lecturer Environmental Engineering Started in September 2009 Teach at undergrad and postgrad level in the School of Engineering

4. Cost v. benefit calculation for feedback… v.

5. Cost v. benefit calculation for feedback… Benefit to students: – How can I improve the provision of feedback in the modules I teach? – Can we improve the existing feedback? Cost to staff: – Time. – How to maximise benefits above whilst minimising the time it takes to give feedback?

6. The root of the reflection…. Currently contribute to the 2 nd year EN2010 Laboratory for ACE students Teach the Environmental Engineering laboratory In 2010 had approx. 150 ACE students. 2 x 3 hour lab sessions per week for 10 weeks, = 60 hours contact time. 20 minutes to mark and give feedback on lab reports = 50 hours marking

7. Aims of this preliminary study [1] Examine student response to a different style of feedback in EN2010 [2] Examine group work and its applicability for feedback in ENT752 [3] Examine the use of a secret ingredient for time saving…

8. 1. Examine student response to a different style of feedback in EN2010 Feedback proforma versus annotated reports

10. Annotated Reports using Adobe Reader

11. How would you rate the existing EN2010 Feedback Form? (n=14)

12. Examples of Student Comments existing EN2010 Feedback Form Like Simple, easy and quick to read Gives a clear breakdown of sections and describes (albeit in brief) how competently each part is written. Distinguishing which parts of the report need improving for future reference. tells you which section of the report was good/poor Dislike Lack of comments given. Some markers didn't give any comments! didn't say how the negatives can be improved. Not detailed. we don't know how to improve our report in some specific and detail ways

13. How helpful was the annotated report feedback? (n = 14)

14. Examples of Student Comments on annotated report feedback Like the comments highlight the area where I need to improve my report. This way is more helpful and it gives the student a general understanding of the marking scheme. Highlighted where the problems were in more detail It offered examples in the report where and how improvements could be made.. Dislike It is not clear to derive the standard of the overall report from just these comments, unlike with the tickbox system of the normal style didn't tell you which section of the report was good/poor as in the original feedback Had to scroll through entire document to see each comment

15. Which style of feedback did they prefer overall….?

16. ….so what about the cost? Annotated Report Feedback 14 mins (n= 21, stdv = 3 mins) Standard Proforma 15 mins (n= 18, stdv = 4 mins)

17. Summary quote from survey Although I do understand this type of feedback will be more work for the marker, however I do think this type of feedback was very helpful and even if it was just the first lab undertaken that received this type of feedback, I'm sure it would be much appreciated by future students. I personally would like this kind of feedback on all assignments and having shown this to some of my friends on other courses which are more essay based they'd very much like to see this level of feedback from their respective schools.

18. 2. Examine group work and its applicability for feedback in ENT752 To make a preliminary assessment of the Blackboard wiki tool to set formative group work in order to provide time effective feedback

19. The idea… There may be many instances where the individual project start off as group projects by making much more use of wikis. Feedback can be given at an interim stage on the collaboratively produced work before students then go on to produce individual reports. This would save time giving feedback at the interim stage to students individually Wikis naturally encourage peer review and feedback Minimise cost, but would this reduce benefit..?

20. Amongst Questions posed… Do you think that feedback on a piece of work produced collaboratively is as useful, more useful or less useful than individual feedback on individual reports? Do you think that the Wiki allows peer feedback during the production of the work?

21. Results Generally group feedback was considered to be as useful as individual feedback and also useful by the nature of wikis for peer feedback As a part time student, I only have a very limited amount of time on university campus, so using a tool like this is very helpful to discuss ideas and the way forward with a project, without actually being on campus

22. Is it possible to minimising cost/ maximising benefit? Overall annotated feedback was much preferred by students and took the same time (using V to T) to complete as when the feedback proformas were used I would recommend that using V to T software for annotated feedback may be very useful for certain applications (e.g. through experience Ive found it extremely useful for giving feedback on PhD theses) The use of e-tools such as wikis may play an important role in facilitating group work and be used to give one set of feedback rather than multiple sets therefore saving considerable time whilst still giving useful feedback

23. Thank you, any questions? v.