Lewis Elton
Posts: 5
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| 22/05/2007 17:21 |
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This is a more general response than the individual reviews, which I have posted in the case study fora.
1. Peers need to know the 'ground rules', if they are to give good feedback. So the first step should be an open discussion between tutors, peers and students to whom feedback is given to establish these.
2. After that, they should be left largely alone, unless the students to whom feedback is given raise issues with tutors.
3. Tutors and peers should share their respective feedback with each other on the basis of equality.
4. The above points are equally valid, whether feedback is for improvement or judgment - what Peter Knight called high stakes feedback.
5. If peer feedback is confined to improvement and excludes judgment, it will probably not be taken seriously by either tutors or peers, and almost certainly not by the receiving students.
6. It is therefore very important that peers should be allowed to give high stakes feedback. If institutional regulations forbid this, start with 'for improvement' feedback by peers and use the outcome as an argument with the authorities, to allow it for high stakes feedback. If the authorities prove adamant, try any of the following strategies:
* call in John Cowan as an expert witness
* threaten to leave
* write a piece for the THES
* leave. |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 24/05/2007 17:50 |
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Hi Lewis, your six points sound pretty sensible for me but evrything hangs on the first phrase of item 5, which I find a little enigmatic. Could you please confirm that by "improvement" you mean something like "helpng a colleague improve their insights or skills" and by "judgement" something like "assigning the colleague's work a grade or percentage that will count for accreditation purposes"?
Wishing you all the best for the conference,
Derek |
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Lewis Elton
Posts: 5
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| 24/05/2007 21:11 |
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Dear Derek
I was deliberate in not specifying what I meant by 'improvement' and 'judgment', because I wanted to use these terms essentially to indicate no more than the radical difference between what Peter Knight called low stake and high stake assessment. If pressed for a more precise meaning, I would probably have used words similar to those that you used, but I would be a little worried that by being more precise, I might exclude something. I hope that you find this helpful.
By the way, I take it that you know that Peter died suddenly - and tragically - in his sleep a few days ago.
Best wishes
Lewis
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 25/05/2007 18:17 |
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Thanks for those comments, Lewis.
And yes, I did know Peter died recently, and so young. Very sad.
All the best,
Derek |
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Anna Espasa
Posts: 2
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| 29/05/2007 18:29 |
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Dear Colleagues,
You are an interessting discussion.
With regard to the concept of feedback, for me it's very important taking into account its aim, that is to judge or to improve. I think we have to consider this aim in order to decide the kind of feedback we should give.
In the paper [i] "Formative assessment in a Professional Doctorate Context: Developing Identities as Reasearchers[/i], we can find an exemple of good feedback for improving the learning. But do you think it is necessary to complement this formative assessment (improve) with a summative one (judgement)?
For me, a good instructional design has to have formative assessment and also summative assessment.
Thank you in advance,
Best regards
Anna Espasa
Open University of Catalonia |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 30/05/2007 11:37 |
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Hello Anna,
You ask "do you think it is necessary to complement this formative assessment (improve) with a summative one (judgement)?" Speaking for myself, if I am trying to make proper use of the subjunctive in conversation with Spanish people (as I do) I would be happy for you to encourage me when I was getting it right, tell me where I was getting it wrong, and give me some tips about how to improve (all formative assessment) but I wouldn't thank you for telling me that my performance was worth a D+, A-, pass etc (summative).
Some students, however, may indeed want you to be summative. They may say: "Well it's useful to know that my work has these strengths and these weaknesses, and that it's an improvement on my previous efforts, but what grade would I get for it?" That may not be an easy question to answer.
We may also ask ourselves whether grades and percentages or pass/fail are the only way of expressing a summative assessment. If you write a book and someone reviews it in a newspaper, I imagine you would see the reviewer's remarks as a form of summative assessment even thought they did not give your book a grade! |
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Anna Espasa
Posts: 2
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| 30/05/2007 15:58 |
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Hello Dereck,
Thank you for your replay :-)
My proposal to consider formative assessment + summative assessment has sense within the context where the aim of assessment is (apart from to learn) the accreditation of knowledge, that is, the students has to prove they have adquired knowledge (Compulsory Education).
Often we can see some academic subjects which don't consider formative assessment and only propose a summative assessment system because they are based on a traditional assessment system. I understand that, if you need to certificate some knowledge, should be necessary to integrate formative and summative system.
I have tried to explain more clearly me point of view.
Thanks and regards!!
Anna
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James Derounian
Posts: 6
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| 30/05/2007 16:30 |
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Hallo Lewis (and greetings from the University of Gloucestershire, that I know you know well!)
Your point 1 - presumably it's important for students (and staff) to know whether their feedback is influencing an assignment mark (or not);
And on the issue of 'high stakes' feedback can you say a bit more about this, elaborate on your meaning please.
James |
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Barbara Crossouard
Posts: 3
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| 31/05/2007 10:17 |
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Just to add to what Derek has said above, in the discussion of our papers yesterday we queried if you could make such a clear distinction between comments that aim at improvement or judgement. Instead we would argue that in any comment there is an element of evaluation or judgement. What varies is the extent to which this is implicit or explicit though, and again that relates to the context and the power relations of the different people involved in giving and receiving the feedback comments.
I think Derek's point about expressing summative assessment in different ways is important too, and in our case study summative assessment (on pass/fail basis) was accompanied by fairly extensive feedback comments - these comments were not themselves part of the data set, but the interviews took place after the summative assessment, and students spoke of using these comments also for their future work. This depended on the focus of the comments though, and whether they could be recognised as having relevance for students' future work and their developing interests. For example feedback comments that related to a substantive area that the student had now left behind were pretty much dismissed in one case, with a student commenting 'oh sod that', and no longer interested in that topic area. In the module in focus in our case study, it was arguably easier to make comments relevant to students, given that they would be going on to do a research project. Relevance would be more problematic possibly in undergrad contexts where there might be less coherence in an overall programme.
Barbara |
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