Aims
Leading on from this, I also created flipped feedback structures where students could develop their ideas before and during the assessment piece rather than afterwards. Hounsell argues that ‘shifting the locus of feedback from end of task to in-task means that feedback becomes prospective rather than retrospective’ (Hounsell 2015 in Y1 Feedback 2016). This approach proved, as the literature states, to be an effective way to promote student engagement with feedback because it gave students the opportunity to utilise it (Price et al 2012, Carless 2015, O’Donovan, Rust and Price 2015 in Y1 Feedback 2016).
Overarching Aim:
- To develop students’ feedback and assessment literacies to improve academic performance;
Specific Aims:
- To develop feedback strategies such as dialogical feedback, flipped feedback and feed forward to improve students’ concept and competency development;
- To measure to what extent this implementation has been effective using qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
Context
The student group comprise second year Digital Humanities students. The module, Community Development and Active Citizenship. There are 10 students in the group and whilst it is diverse in terms of ability, age range and level of experience, it is a very tight-knit, cohesive group. The module is a one-semester module and students have never studied Community Development / Active Citizenship before.
The methodological focus of the Politics strand of the degree is theoretical and less weight is given to praxis. This proved problematic with a topic like Community Development with students finding it difficult to grasp without reflecting on practical examples of how it works on the ground.
Assessment:
Assessment element 1: 5 online discussion forums on Moodle;
- 1 open-ended question per forum;
- All topics covered in the module;
- Collectively comprise 40% of the total grade.
Assessment element 2: Essay
- Subject: Social movement, community development project / organisation of the student’s choice as a model to critique concepts.
- 60% of the final grade.
The assessment format allowed for multi-staged assignments, and linked assignments which means that there were multiple opportunities for feedback conversations to take place.
The assessment format also allowed for timely and on-going feedback during the semester because the online discussion forums were scheduled every two weeks during the semester. Therefore, feedback conversations could take place after each forum and feed-forward could be shared in preparation for the next forum. Flipped feedback could also be given based on students’ performance in the early forums and in anticipation of subsequent forum discussions and the final essay.