Supporting student tutorials with the feedback dashboard
Date: 27/01/22
Will Jackson
Anne Hayes
Summary
Using the feedback dashboard to support student tutorial meetings.
Further Information:
Subject Area:
Criminology
Level: 4-7
Keywords
Assessment, Feedback, Formative, PDPR, Reflection, Rubric, Student Engagement, Student Feedback, Summative, Tutorials
Case Study:
What have we been doing?
Will and Anne are both lecturers on the Criminology programme. The programme team have been working collectively to share and improve feedback practice. Part of this includes an ongoing process of adopting a single rubric added to all Canvas assignments. The aim of this is to help students by providing a consistent framework by which they can gauge their improvements, identify weaknesses to work on, and get to know the underlying aims of the course. Another process that the team is beginning to look at is to develop a consistent approach to written feedback on Canvas, using best practice in this area.
Like most programmes, feedback is incredibly time consuming, and finding ways to ensure students get the most from this effort is important to the team. Students recognise the importance of individual tutorials, but tend not to be prepared, therefore not realising this until late in their studies. There is also a risk that in writing feedback tutors can become side-tracked by other demands and start writing feedback to satisfy externals rather than supporting students. Will and Anne are finding that the Feedback Dashboard is helping support students and their own development.
What is the feedback dashboard?
The feedback dashboard is an online space where staff can access all the electronic feedback in Canvas for each student in a single page.
Seeing student feedback across the programme
The main way Will and Anne are using this dashboard is prior and during individual tutorials and PDPs, using it to help students to see the commonalities across the different assessments leading to plans and strategies to improve.
- Prior to meeting: prior to a meeting they might go in and have a brief glance at some of the different comments left on the assignments and also a quick overview of their marks in the past semester.
“I only spend a couple of minutes on the system before the session. I usually discover that the same things are coming up, this allows me to have a more focused meeting” Anne
- Talking to students: This can then lead to more targeted dialogue with students in a more in depth way, rather than just fishing for issues you can actually get down to the detail straight away.
- Developing a relationship: Using the dashboard allows you to be more aware of what is going on. On large programmes, students can feel like a number, this allows you to treat them more personally, and that you are keeping a close eye on their progress. When I meet my personal tutees for PDP they feel that I am aware of what is going on with them because I can comment on their strengths and where they need to develop
- Connecting the dots: Helping the student to see the connections between the assignments
“As staff submitting to journals our experience of feedback is usually so useful because eventually you are going to get something out of responding to it and getting your work published. In contrast, for students feedback tends to feel final and there's no chance to resubmit, so it's an important part of the process to work alongside the student to connect those dots and help the student utilise the feedback from a previous submission to improve the next one. Students don't always naturally see that connection” Will
- Struggling students: For Anne and Will it is particularly helpful with struggling students because then you can analyse why they're struggling in more detail and discuss strengths and weaknesses and try and identify common problems.
“If a student is suddenly getting poor marks at level 5 I might even look further back at level 4 to see how they were doing then and perhaps this will help confirm suspicions around the struggles that they might be suffering from.” Anne
- Transition and looking back as well as forwards: It is also useful for looking at any students who have moved to the masters programme from the undergrad programme because it's easy to look back over the previous years in order to understand that student and how they are progressing on the new level.
- Seeing from student point of view: Seeing the range of feedback helps you to understand the student experience from receiving all of these comments, and the emotional affects that might have.
- Helping to catch up on where they are at: Because of the increased numbers of students on the course using the tool helps you get to know where the student is at, and what they have been doing recently.
- Hidden problems: Feedback can also contain hints of deeper more hidden problems.
“I may even find that there are comments about particular issues that the student might be facing so this will help me point the student towards student welfare.” Anne
- Improving my feedback by seeing good examples: When reviewing the feedback you can identify good practice from other staff.
“I read other people's comments and I do pick up on good practice, for instance there was an example where staff were pointing students to study skills and their feedforward sessions so I now use that idea in my own feedback” Anne
What next
After positive comments from the programmes external reviewer during validation on its use, Anne and Will are looking are developing its use across the team.
Will and Anne are both happy with the design and find it easy to use. It is designed to provide an overview when you first own it, allowing you to explore elements of feedback if required.
From Anne and Will’s input the Teaching and Learning Academy are going to look at developing and improving:
- The search function
- The display of rubric information
- Link to the submission to access annotations if needed.
- The possibility of allowing students to access their own dashboards.
Further reading/more information:
- Staff feedback dashboard guide
- Blog Post: Recent Assessment and Feedback Developments in Canvas (Staff)
- How to use Canvas rubrics
- Winstone, N.E., Carless, D., 2021. Who is feedback for? The influence of accountability and quality assurance agendas on the enactment of feedback processes. Assess. Educ. Princ. Policy Pract. 0, 1–18.