Perceptions of Feedback: Myth & Reality

Jon Scott

School of Biological Sciences

Some of the Issues

• What’s the fuss about?• What is feedback?• A common understanding?• The module effect• Expectations• Utility & Utilisation

Learning how to eat Smarties…

• Active engagement• Rewards• Common view of success and its

measurement• Feedback shows what is OK and what

needs changing for next time• Review of original performance in the

light of feedback

Feedback Projects

• Seeing Eye to Eye: Comparing the Perceptions of Students & Staff

• ‘Quick Wins’ Campaign

• Peer Observation of Feedback

• Departmental Guidance

• Student Engagement with Feedback

‘Seeing Eye to Eye’ - Context

• 85 1st year students on Biological Sciences programme

• 1st semester assessments– Weekly practical report (from day 10), 5 day turn-

round– Weekly tutorials - 3 essays (3 week turn-round), 1

oral presentation

• Feedback cover sheet– Strengths– Areas for improvement

Methods

• On-line Questionnaire– based on Gibbs’ Assessment Experience

Questionnaire

– posted early in semester 2

• Response rate: 57 % yr 1 54% yr 2

• 1st year Focus Groups

• Structured interviews with academic staff

Student Participants

• Questionnaire – 57% of yr group• Focus Groups – 25% of yr group

0

10

20

30

40

50

First 2.1 2.2 3/A Pass Fail

Degree Class

Per

cent

age

of T

otal

Questionnaire

Focus Group

Staff Participants

• 14 Module Convenors

• 7 Personal Tutors (non 1st yr teachers)

• 1 Student Learning Centre Advisor

Perceptions of Feedback Types Received (Focus Group)

• Unprompted:– Comments on cover sheets

• Prompted:– Comments on oral presentations– Annotations on scripts

• Specifically asked:– Verbal feedback in practical classes,

tutorials & personal tutors

Types of Feedback Given (Staff)

• Written feedback – cover sheets & annotations

• “They are probably less aware of the direct help they get by talking to people in lab classes, I think”,

• “… interactions are the most useful in terms of students’ appreciation of things like concepts that you are trying to explain. I think just the nature of handling the number of students in 1st year practicals means we can’t give immediate feedback in terms of what the correct answer was but concepts, approach and understanding the bigger picture, they should leave with that as feedback”.

Quantity of Feedback

On this course I get plenty of feedback in how I am doing

67%

The feedback is usually too uninformative or brief to be helpful

35%

The more feedback I receive, the more I learn

89%

Quality of Feedback

The feedback uses language that is easy to understand

87%

The feedback shows me how to do better next time

73%

I can seldom see from the feedback what I need to do to improve

35%

The feedback does not help me with subsequent assignments

11%

Quality & Utility of Feedback• “Sometimes the comments are helpful but

sometimes it’s comments like when you get say 60% in a practical report and they tell you it could be ‘better written’. But you’ve done all that you can to write it to the best of your ability, so it’s kind of vague, I don’t know where to improve”.

• “One of my friends had a higher mark than me and she got more comments than me in the ‘places to improve’. I had nothing and was like ‘well I need to improve and you don’t so why have you got the comments?’. That’s what I was thinking”.

Quality & Utility of Feedback

• “I got one write up which was 90% and she [the marker] was still like ‘you could improve it here or here’. It was quite a lot of comments considering it was a high mark and it was really good because it was ‘ok, that’s what I need to be doing”.

Timing of Feedback

It doesn’t matter if a module has finished before I receive feedback as I know the advice will be relevant to my new module

51%

The feedback usually comes back promptly

56%

Whatever feedback I receive comes back too late to be useful

15%

Timing of Feedback

• “…all that depends on the marker. This time we’ve had one who was sometimes taking two weeks to get the reports back. Another one has got them back on the Tuesday, having had them on the Wednesday before. So it depends really on who you’ve got.”

Utilisation of Feedback

I have received clear and sufficient guidance on how to understand and use feedback

42%

I read the feedback carefully and try to understand what is being said

71%

I use the feedback to go back over what I have done in the assignment

55%

I have good intentions to act on feedback I receive but forget suggestions for improvement next time I do coursework

29%

I do not use the feedback when revising 31%

I tend to only read the marks 9%

Utilisation of Feedback

• “A lot of the time it’ll depend on the mark as to how much I do look at it [the feedback]. If I’ve got a really high mark, I’ll tend to look and think ‘oh I’ve done well’ and just put it away. If I’ve got a really bad mark I’ll look and think what I’ve done wrong, why I got that mark”

• “If I expect a mark, low or high, and it’s that, I don’t really read the comments. If I get a mark that’s really different from what I expected then I’ll really read the comments”.

Students’ Reflections on Staff Views

• They probably think we don’t read it and just put it to one side.”

• “I’m sure some of them think they’re just doing it and it’s a bit pointless and you’re not going to look at it anyway.”

• “I suppose some of them [markers] must hope that if they bother to write something down then it gets read. But they must accept that there’s a great deal of variation between students”.

Staff Views• “I suspect it varies, some will read it all and

come to see you to ask what it means. Others, I suspect, only read the marks and check there is not too much red ink….I think if the number reflects what they are expecting then they don’t pay too much attention to it.”

• “My experience is that feedback is definitely used, it’s a very constructive thing, a useful thing and a good proportion of students are using feedback.”

Issues & Actions

• School vs University experience

• Recognition of feedback

• ConsistencyTimingContent & Structure

• Utility‘Feed forward’ Encouraging engagement with feedback Language

Actions

• ‘Quick Wins’ Campaign

• Peer Observation of Feedback

• Departmental Guidance

• Student Engagement with Feedback

Engaging Students with Feedback

We asked students:

• Name five types of feedback you receive on your work

• What is the most useful piece of feedback you have received?

• Name one way in which you have used feedback to improve your learning

Postcard Campaign

“Name five types of feedback you receive on your work” (top 10 answers)

written comments on assignments

verbal

coursework marks/grades

seminar/tutorial/workshop/problem class

scheduled meetings or office hours with lecturer or tutor

email

marked exam/test paper/problem sheet

from peers

after presentations

feedback cover sheet

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Number of appearances of answer

% Respondents naming 5 different formats of feedback received Biological Sciences vs University

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Biol Sci

University

Verbal

Written

Marks/grades

Email/online

Group

feedback

Peers

% Respondents

Formats of feedback by year group

Verbal

Written

Marks/grades

Email/online

Group

feedback

Peers

Friendfeed0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Final years

2nd years

1st years

% Respondents

“What is the most useful piece of feedback you have received?” (top 10 answers)

better structuring of assignments

how to improve

identify strengths and weaknesses

advice on referencing

critical feedback

advice to read more

be more clear/concise

advised to re-read work before submitting

breakdown of where marks were lost

advice to focus on answering the question

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Appearance of answer as % of all answers

Ways in which feedback has been used

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Biol Sci

Uni

Reflect on feedback when producing next…

Improved writing skills

Read more to improve understanding

Identify areas needed to study in more depth

Improved referencing skills

Feedback motivated me to improve

Read through work before sumission

Learnt from mistakes

Guided me on revising

Improved presentation skills

% Respondents

Activities for next year include…

• Standardised information on feedback in Course handbooks

• Institutional guidelines on time taken for feedback to be received

• Consistency in feedback• Keep up awareness of feedback as an issue –

autumn term campaign working with the Students’ Union

• Repeat the Peer Observation of Marking exercise in 2012-13

• Continuation of campaigns including: I love my academic