Creative Approaches to Feedback in STEM

Feedback to students is a “hot topic” across the university sector. Students tell us, in the NSS and elsewhere, that they do not receive enough feedback and that what they receive is not useful. How can we realistically give feedback to large groups of students in a manner that they find meaningful and that will support their learning?

This short workshop will address this question via three interactive talks from our colleagues in the Department of Mathematics Education. After the talks, there will be an optional informal discussion for colleagues who might wish to follow up in a small group.

If you can, please bring a laptop or tablet to the session for hands-on experience with comparative judgment.

Refreshments will be available from 12.30pm and for the duration of the workshop.

Workshop structure

1.00pm-1.35pm Feedback and Learning

Iro Xenidou-Dervou will provide an overview of what research in psychology tells us about effective learning, focusing on issues that bear on feedback design.

1.40pm-2.15pm Feedback in Large Lectures

Lara Alcock will talk about what we ideally want to achieve with feedback, and how we might approach that in practical ways by letting go of unhelpful assumptions about who gives feedback and how.

2.20pm-2.55pm Feedback through Comparative Judgement

Ian Jones will talk about using comparative judgement to promote learning by engaging students in a structured way in peer feedback and reflection.

3.00pm-3.30pm Informal discussion on follow-up

Iro, Lara and Ian will talk informally with colleagues who might wish to follow up by taking part in a small number of, say, monthly meetings in which some combination of us work collaboratively to reflect on and improve our own and one another’s feedback practice.