The e-Feedback Evaluation Project (eFeP)

applied

Teacher

Higher Education

This study shows that in technology-enhanced learning enforced with e-feedback, highly motivated students do engage with tutor feedback and make active efforts to integrate it. It suggests that a tutor’s incorrect assumptions about the student’s abilities, expectations or attitudes in relation to feedback can contribute to these occasional breakdowns in communication.

2014-04-07 10:00:00 - 2014-04-07 10:00:00

Very difficult

20 - 35

The aim of the project is to evaluate the use of spoken and written e-feedback in a context in which these modes of delivery have been adopted by a Higher Education institution across an entire subject area.

The e-Feedback Evaluation Project (eFeP) is a JISC-funded collaborative project involving the Open University (OU) and the University of Manchester, UK. The Open University, uses of both audio-recorded and written efeedback at the Department of Languages for a number of years.

The evaluation looks at staff and student perceptions of assignment feedback, the quality of feedback itself, and student engagement with the feedback. More specifically, the project aimed to evaluate:

• the students’ and tutors’ attitudes to assignment feedback in each of the media commonly used at the OU;
• the quality of feedback in three of the media used in terms of the criteria being assessed and the depth of feedback on strengths and weaknesses;
• the effectiveness of feedback in terms of student engagement and response.

Effective feedback not only enriches the learning experience, but is essential to successful learning (Hurd, 2000; 2006; Ramsden, 2003; White, 2003), yet the results of the UK National Student Survey (2012) show that feedback remains an ongoing challenge for HE institutions in terms of student satisfaction.

Feedback on feedback

The F/F study was designed as a follow-up to the staff and student surveys and the analysis of tutor feedback. The aim of the study was to elicit and evaluate the students’ cognitive, metacognitive and affective responses to their tutor’s feedback. In analysing the recordings, special attention was given to the attitudes and perceptions reported in the surveys, as well as the features of tutor feedback that had been identified in the feedback analysis study..

Subjects: Participants adult university students studying distance learning modules in Spanish at the Open University. All the levels taught at the OU were represented in the sample.

Each student’s recordings were analysed in terms of their use of the two media (TMA script and PT3 form); their cognitive, affective and metacognitive responses to comments on strengths and comments on weaknesses; and their responses to different depths of feedback relating to strengths and weaknesses of their work. The notion of depth, proposed by Brown and Glover (2006) refers to feedback that either indicates a weakness/strength (depth 1), corrects the error/describes the strength, or gives an explanation. Fernández-Toro, Truman and Walker (2013) suggest an additional level for cases where errors or strengths are categorised, for example when tutors use codes to indicate the category to which an error belongs (e.g. gender agreement). Thus, the four depths considered in this analysis are:

1. Indicated;

2. Categorised/Described;

3. Corrected/Exemplified;

4. Explained.

A further category was added where some kind of action to avoid an error or build on a strength in future is proposed. As the brief given to the students was fairly open, responses to different types of feedback cannot be compared quantitatively.

Results

Students’ reported strategy for using the feedback All students reported looking at the PT3 form before the TMA script, and all started by looking at their mark.  They were also generally enthusiastic about receiving an overview in the general feedback form. As for the script, one student admitted that she had not really looked at it much, whilst another reported that she normally sets it aside until she has enough time to work systematically through each comment on her script. Printing out the feedback is common practice, sometimes in parallel with the computer, as markup comments on Word can be easier to read on screen than on paper. Subsequent use of the feedback was reported in only three cases, normally for revision purposes before the final assessment. Although all students found the feedback useful and clear, one stated that she had not learnt much from it and would just continue doing the same as she had been doing in her assignment.

For details, see the Full Paper link.