Round table discussion presented by Dr Sumanjit Gill with co presenters Karen Matthewman and Dr Caroline Selai
Facilitated by Dr Martin Compton
This was a well attended discussion with contributions from attendees from around the UK in addition to departments within UCL. We we able to share experiences in addition to ideas for the future about developing both our and our students feedback literacy. I started with a very short presentation about the work with students on their academic writing I have done on a Stroke masters programme over several years with limited success, a lot of energy and particularly during the period of remote study discursive conflict between both markers and students. Dr Selai was able to start us off with an acknowledgement of student and markers tension and conflict, which can arise within the academic environment of the Institute of Neurology when delivering feedback on assessed academic writing. These are partially due to factors embedded in the culture but also due to students ability to receive and use feedback, power distance in relationships and students perceptions of their own performance.
Karen who had joined us from Arena was able to be more critical of the work I done, based on her experience she suggested warming up students at the beginning of the year for example with free writing tasks and then moving into becoming more critical of each others scientific writing over time. Interestingly, there was an opposite view point from a colleague from Coventry who has achieved success from starting from day 1 in the course and giving regular weekly feedback to students as she felt that after week 6 the opportunity for improvement had been lost. Supporting the students in reflective activity seemed to be key in this process regardless of approach.
We also discussed feedback literacy in our markers and ways to firstly help them recognise their importance in the role of developing students academic writing. Harmonisation meetings was the strategy most used and Dr Compton was an advocate of this. This involved a faculty meeting at the start of the marking period during which time several pieces of academic work were group marked. This was termed as a bench marking exercise by some in the discussion but overall the feeling was that this was the correct approach for ensuring accuracy of academic judgement, increasing markers confidence and increasing their feedback literacy.
Examples of interventions I have developed in the Stroke masters programme:
- Student Activities and Taught sessions
- Guided marking – using mark sheets to mark a previous years dissertation
- Peer Review activity
- One on one sessions post assessment to review feedback given
- Academic writing – taught session
- Academic writing – online Moodle pages (Stroke MSc specific )
- Understanding and Using Feedback – taught session post 1st assessment feedback
- Giving Good Feedback video
- Mentoring for new markers