This issue’s SPOTLIGHT ON... focuses on The University of Dundee, which has identified improving feedback to students on assessments as an important priority for development. The university is working with sparqs to develop a resource which encourages staff and students to reflect on practice with a view to enhancing this important aspect of the learning experience
How can staff give students useful feedback after assessments that can help their future learning? How can students use this effectively? What methods do staff and students feel work best? These are all big questions for institutions as the issue of feedback on assessment becomes increasingly important. The University of Dundee has embarked upon an institution-wide effort to share and enhance practice across the university on feedback on assessment. The initiative, part of a wider review of assessment and feedback practice, aims to achieve a better student experience in relation to assessment.
The university has invited sparqs, through its consultancy work, to collaborate on the development of a toolkit containing questions, examples and exercises that small groups of staff and student representatives can use to reflect on how feedback on assessment works and can be improved in each school. Elements of the toolkits focus on particular issues, such as the principles of good feedback, how to define feedback, considering a variety of different tools of feedback, and how to share effective practice within, between and beyond the university’s schools.
The toolkits aim to be useful, practical and adaptable to individual disciplinary needs, and are being piloted with four of the university’s fifteen schools. They will then be finalised and rolled out across the university at the end of the 2011-12 academic year.
Despite being in pilot phase, the trials have already led to benefits in the learning experience, for instance by allowing staff and students to share their understandings of feedback on assessment, giving staff new ideas to try out, and feeding in to school-level policies and practices.
To find out more, please contact Dr David Walker, Senior Learning Technologist, of the University of Dundee’s Library & Learning Centre at d.j.walker@dundee.ac.uk or Simon Varwell, sparqs Development Advisor, at simon.varwell@sparqs.ac.uk
