Discussion
The case study met the aims of improving Digital Humanities students’ concept and competency skills through developing assessment and feedback literacies, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the starting point of each student. It also brought about a number of interesting and though-provoking unanticipated outcomes such as metacognitive development, increased student engagement and shone light on the importance of feedback and assessment practice in improving students’ emotional commitment to the learning process.
We know to what extent we achieved the desired outcome having analysed student and lecturer qualitative and quantitative data. (See evaluation section)
Some of the implemented feedback strategies were highlighted by students as having had the greatest impact (i.e. students writing their own questions for the online discussion forums, the silent debate flipped feedback exercise and in-task feedback comments). But I believe that without having the overall dialogical, participative assessment and feedback structure in place, these strategies would not have been as effective.
Most of the student group improved their understanding of Community Development and Active Citizenship concepts and competencies such as critical thinking and connecting theory with practice. We know this because at the start of the semester most students were commenting on the content of a text in a descriptive way and by the end of the semester, many students were able to take that text and think about who wrote it, what relationship they may have to the status quo, why they may have written it and then make informed judgements on said text. Even the least engaged student made a comment as he was leaving the last class which showed that he had understood some of the nuances of Community Development. He said:
‘This module gave my Mum the words why she stopped volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul – 'coz it wasn’t Community Development it was just giving poor people hand-outs’.
But what was even more interesting, was that students were not only thinking more critically about the concepts in the module, but about their own learning. They were not only linking Community Development practice to theory but they were also questioning how new knowledge fit or contradicted knowledge which they held previously; they were connecting ideas developed in this module and using them in assessed presentations for other modules (Antonio Gramsci mentioned in one student’s English literature presentation on Macbeth). They were able to be crystal clear as to what they had learned, what they had yet to learn and very importantly, how they had learned what they had learned. By developing metacognitive skills, they were becoming self-regulated learners. Towards the later stage of the forums, the students themselves were seeing gaps in peers’ knowledge in their posts and they began to post clips and readings which may be of interest to their peers. The peer feedback was not generic, thoughtless advice, it often addressed a gap in knowledge or argument which they saw in their peer. This case study is not concerned with peer feedback, but it does show that students were able to critically reflect on their peers and their own content or competency gaps and address those gaps thoughtfully.
I believe that one of the major contributing factors of students’ interest in metacognition was due to my metacognitive modelling. Evidence suggested to me in the first few weeks of class that the student group hadn't had many opportunities to be self-aware or critically reflective. I did not just go about changing the feedback and assessment practice, I shared (where appropriate) with the students my own metacognitive process during this semester with them and the metacognitive process which we were embarking on together by revolutionising our feedback and assessment practice.