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2-D feedback (ipsative and cohort-based)

Title: 2-D feedback: (ipsative and cohort-based)
Date/time: Thursday 26 July 2012, 10am-3pm
        (my own slot: 1:30 - 2:00pm).
Occasion: HEA workshop: "Implementing best practice guidelines to promote assessment for learning: challenges and rewards"
Place: University of Dundee   Dalhousie Building,   Room: 2F11
(Address: Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill, Balfour Street, Dundee, DD1 4HB )
How to get there: Instructions
Presenter Steve Draper,   School of Psychology,   University of Glasgow.

Slides: PDF
Handout: PDF file
Related material:

  • My web notes on 2-D feedback
  • The "interACT" JISC project, which the workshop is based on (Rola's project's blog)
  • My talk on prompting student processing of feedback
  • Draper,S.W. (2009) "What are learners actually regulating when given feedback?" British Journal of Educational Technology vol.40 no.2 pp.306-315   DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2008.00930.x

    Abstract

    The departure point for this talk is the question "What are learners actually regulating when given feedback?" (Draper, 2009). The answer to that is often "self-regulation of effort" not the accuracy of bits of their content knowledge. My observation is that most students need a mark to self-regulate their effort, and use them far more than they do open-ended / qualitative comments.

    This talk calls marks/grades "feedback" even though they are quantitative and superficially summative, because they are used formatively to modify learner behaviour (their effort). Yet the numbers or codes in which teachers express marks are poor by themselves at communicating what the student needs to know: should I work harder or less hard at this?

    2-D feedback is letting the learner know how they are doing both relative to their previous performance (ipsative) and relative to the rest of the class (e.g. their rank in class, or a grade if they know what the grades mean in terms of other students' performance).

    The problem this addresses is the unhelpfulness of common practice in HEIs of some absolute scale with grade descriptors, which however don't give the student any usable comparisons for the mark they receive. Like giving a volume in minims, a weight in scruples, or a temperature in degrees Réaumur: numbers actually only are useful to people who already remember, as comparison points, the numbers of some other cases measured on the same scale.

    Draft design principle: (the workshop was couched to be about "best practice guidelines"):

    Design Principle

    Ensure students can translate their marks into usable information for their self-regulatory decisions

    To book (no charge, limited to 40 places) email   interACT@dundee.ac.uk   (Karen Barton) or contact Rola Ajjawa or Susie Schofield.

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