The files listed below provide background information, together with policy and procedures and a text-based guide to delivering feedback online. The narrated 15 minute video can be viewed at http://ltss.beds.ac.uk/2q/2011/2q.html.
Improved assessment feedback is among the top priorities among students students at UoB and across the sector, including the NUS. Assessment feedback at UoB achieves a varied report from our student population, in the NSS and through various internal reporting mechanisms.
Feedback timing is a core, though not the only, issue. At the moment, feedback is either in hard copy or in person, and the physical act of coursework return is integrated with the feedback system. Students who are, for legitimate reasons, not frequent visitors to campuses in normal working hours may experience particular problems in obtaining their marked work, and therefore also their feedback. But there are also difficulties in returning large volumes of marked work either in class or individually.
We know that while a proportion of our students respond well to our current system, and identify a value in the detailed commentary and face to face feedback that is available in some areas, it is also the case, as in other HEIs, that much coursework remains uncollected after marking, and that a proportion of students who do collect it acknowledge that they do not make full use of it.
So, while we may believe that we are providing feedback of value, if the timeliness of its provision is such that its value to students is reduced, and if our students value that timeliness more than the detail we may provide if given longer to do so, then we would provide greater support to more students if we produced more accessible feedback earlier, even at the expense of some degree of detail.
Therefore, for 2011-12, we will move to a new system in which feedback is provided online to students. This will respond to student preference for feedback that is provided quickly and answers key questions, either as interim or final feedback. UBSU supports this approach, and will, with the University, develop and implement a communication plan to make clear to students that this approach is being taken in response to their feedback. We will also communicate this to external examiners.
This feedback will be based on two questions that recur in student accounts of what is important in feedback one about the extent to which their work has met the criteria set for the task, and the other specifying how they could improve their work in the future when undertaking a similar or related task:
Responses to these questions will be provided through Turnitin QuickMark designed to structure responses to the two questions above. Additional comment is permitted provided that its provision does not delay the provision of feedback within the University timeframe. Whether we should / will need to provide provisional grades is an issue still in review.
Additional hard copy feedback may also be provided on the same basis, and face to face feedback is encouraged where students seek this. Course teams are encouraged to develop procedures which encourage students to actively engage with the feedback provided.
On this basis, moderation and external examination of work can proceed without delaying the provision of feedback. The University will also have an archive of assessments with feedback available for review and audit as may be required.
Following review of the NSS results, it has been agreed that the following areas are performing at a level sufficient to suggest that they should be encouraged to share details of their practice during 2011-12 and to be allowed to transfer to online feedback for Sept 2012, to ensure that their current success is not risked by swift change:
