Effective Feedback to Small and Large Classes. Søndergaard, H. & Thomas, D. In Proceedings of the 2004 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE2004), pages F1E-9–F1E-14, oct, 2004. doi abstract bibtex Educational experts appear to be in broad agreement when it comes to the importance of feedback for effective learning. Students benefit from plenty of opportunity and encouragement to express their understanding, and from informed, supportive, possibly challenging, feedback. At the same time, we observe that many students at our university do not find that they receive helpful feedback. One in three Engineering students disagree or strongly disagree with the Quality of Teaching questionnaire's ``I received helpful feedback on how I was going'' in the individual course, and most other disciplines find themselves in a similar situation. For the university as a whole, student responses to this question are clearly less positive than to other questions on quality of teaching, intellectual stimulation, staff interest, workload, and so on, and this state of affairs seems quite common in the Australian context. We discuss best practice in feedback provision, partly based on our interviews with students and staff. We have been particularly interested in identifying cost-effective ways of providing informed and constructive feedback to large classes. Feedback is often understood, by Engineering students and staff alike, simply as comments on submitted work—typically written assignments. We argue in favour of a broader concept that covers a multitude of ways for a student to develop deep learning through conversation, including questions and answers provided by others, team work, study groups, and formative teacher-provided feedback during an assessment task. We emphasise the coaching role of the teacher, and feedback designed to encourage students to monitor own learning. Large classes pose particular logistic problems. We identify staff development as a crucial factor for consistent, effective feedback, and point to web-based feedback provision as a workable solution to some logistic problems. We briefly discuss the role of information technology more broadly, both for learning enhancement and for automated feedback provision.
@InProceedings{Son-Tho_FIE04,
author = {Harald S{\o}ndergaard and
Doreen Thomas},
title = {Effective Feedback to Small and Large Classes},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2004 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in
Education Conference (FIE2004)},
pages = {F1E-9--F1E-14},
location = {Savannah GA},
month = {oct},
year = {2004},
doi = {10.1109/FIE.2004.1408573},
abstract = {Educational experts appear to be in broad agreement when it
comes to the importance of feedback for effective learning.
Students benefit from plenty of opportunity and encouragement
to express their understanding, and from informed, supportive,
possibly challenging, feedback. At the same time, we observe
that many students at our university do not find that they
receive helpful feedback. One in three Engineering students
disagree or strongly disagree with the Quality of Teaching
questionnaire's ``I received helpful feedback on how I was
going'' in the individual course, and most other disciplines
find themselves in a similar situation. For the university as
a whole, student responses to this question are clearly less
positive than to other questions on quality of teaching,
intellectual stimulation, staff interest, workload, and so on,
and this state of affairs seems quite common in the Australian
context. We discuss best practice in feedback provision, partly
based on our interviews with students and staff. We have been
particularly interested in identifying cost-effective ways of
providing informed and constructive feedback to large classes.
Feedback is often understood, by Engineering students and staff
alike, simply as comments on submitted work---typically written
assignments. We argue in favour of a broader concept that
covers a multitude of ways for a student to develop deep
learning through conversation, including questions and answers
provided by others, team work, study groups, and formative
teacher-provided feedback during an assessment task. We
emphasise the coaching role of the teacher, and feedback
designed to encourage students to monitor own learning. Large
classes pose particular logistic problems. We identify staff
development as a crucial factor for consistent, effective
feedback, and point to web-based feedback provision as a
workable solution to some logistic problems. We briefly discuss
the role of information technology more broadly, both for
learning enhancement and for automated feedback provision.},
keywords = {Education},
}
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At the same time, we observe that many students at our university do not find that they receive helpful feedback. One in three Engineering students disagree or strongly disagree with the Quality of Teaching questionnaire's ``I received helpful feedback on how I was going'' in the individual course, and most other disciplines find themselves in a similar situation. For the university as a whole, student responses to this question are clearly less positive than to other questions on quality of teaching, intellectual stimulation, staff interest, workload, and so on, and this state of affairs seems quite common in the Australian context. We discuss best practice in feedback provision, partly based on our interviews with students and staff. We have been particularly interested in identifying cost-effective ways of providing informed and constructive feedback to large classes. Feedback is often understood, by Engineering students and staff alike, simply as comments on submitted work—typically written assignments. We argue in favour of a broader concept that covers a multitude of ways for a student to develop deep learning through conversation, including questions and answers provided by others, team work, study groups, and formative teacher-provided feedback during an assessment task. We emphasise the coaching role of the teacher, and feedback designed to encourage students to monitor own learning. Large classes pose particular logistic problems. We identify staff development as a crucial factor for consistent, effective feedback, and point to web-based feedback provision as a workable solution to some logistic problems. 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One in three Engineering students \n\t\tdisagree or strongly disagree with the Quality of Teaching \n\t\tquestionnaire's ``I received helpful feedback on how I was \n\t\tgoing'' in the individual course, and most other disciplines \n\t\tfind themselves in a similar situation. For the university as \n\t\ta whole, student responses to this question are clearly less \n\t\tpositive than to other questions on quality of teaching,\n\t\tintellectual stimulation, staff interest, workload, and so on,\n\t\tand this state of affairs seems quite common in the Australian\n\t\tcontext. We discuss best practice in feedback provision, partly\n\t\tbased on our interviews with students and staff. We have been \n\t\tparticularly interested in identifying cost-effective ways of \n\t\tproviding informed and constructive feedback to large classes.\n\t\tFeedback is often understood, by Engineering students and staff\n\t\talike, simply as comments on submitted work---typically written\n\t\tassignments. 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