Continuous Student Feedback (CSF)

Ksenia Troshina

Office: FG301

Phone: 34008329

Agenda

- Perceived trends in Academic community (teaching and learning)

- Feedback collection at tertiary institutions

- Pros and Cons; Benefits and Challenges

- Implications

It’s a big world out there and we are part of itAcademic Co-creative Inquiry (ACCI)

- Co-creation of the course content and process

- Learning contracts

- Personalizing prescribed learning

- Students define resources, obstacles, set assignment dates and marking criteria

- Self and peer reflection

- Teacher facilitates the process

- Assists in the development of integrity among learners

Ksenija Napan (Massey University, New Zealand, Hawaii, 2017)

You can learn more here:

https://sites.google.com/site/cocreativelearning/home

Initial inspiration: Curtin University, English Language Center

• International audience; different age groups;

• Difficult to generalize;

• Need for better understanding;

Use of feedback collection at tertiary institutions

• Our philosophical foundation:

- Critical and transformative practices in education;

- the key responsibility of a critical researcher should be to explore “what students know, speak, experience, and feel”. (Cadman, 2005, p. 359)

• Current collection of Student Feedback

- “widespread phenomenon” (Spooren, 2011, p. 121)

- Not widely applied in the ESL context; lack of research

- informal discussions, qualitative sessions (focus groups), student representative meetings and Student Feedback Questionnaires (SFQs). (Harvey, 2003)

- Formative and Summative

(as cited in Troshina & Burns, 2016)

Hong Kong: Socio-cultural context

• “problematized image” of Asian learners who have “oppressed obedience to teachers, lack of critical thinking, and passive participation in class activities” (Kobayashi, 2011, p. 566)

• Students’ and teachers’ beliefs regarding each other play key roles in shaping individuals’ models of behavior (Borg & Al-Busaidi, 2012)

• “When one is consistently not heard, one ceases to speak, and one fails to give one’s opinion” (Ellwood, 2009, p. 108)

(as cited in Troshina & Burns, 2016)

Cons of Student feedback

• Reliability

“students cannot judge all aspects of faculty performance” (Chen & Hoshower, 2003, p. 73);

relation between the time of SETs and examination period, students’ overall grade for the course, gender factor, teacher personal characteristics, class size and so on (Spooren, 2011);

“student’s academic level and maturity” and the possibility of students “punishing their teachers via SET scores” (Pounder, 2007, p. 181);

personal characteristics of an instructor such as “the quality of charisma” affect “judgments… of teaching effectiveness”(Shevlin, Nanyard, Davies, & Griffiths, 2000, p. 399)

• Mostly Summative feedback

“a degree of cynicism among students as they rarely get any information about the consequences of feedback and this, in turn, can contribute to the difficulty of getting students to engage in the process of quality assurance. The loop is thus seldom closed” (Leckey & Neill, 2001, p. 26)

(as cited in Troshina & Burns, 2016)

Pro’s of Student Feedback

• Summative feedback: helps to improve the course in the long run.

• Formative feedback:

Immediate effect on teaching: “it uses student inputs to improve teaching; some feedback from students may aid the individual instructor to better meet student needs” (Newton,1988, p.2).

Beneficial to professional development: teachers become involved in an ongoing ethnographic enquiry of an action research on “teaching issues” (Wagenaar, 1995, p. 66)

Ensures closure of the feedback loop

- the principle of three obligations outlined by Mauss (as cited in Gurevitch, 1990, p. 96): “(a) The obligation to speak (b) The obligation to listen and (c) The obligation to respond. According to Mauss, the gift as the obligation to give is imbued with a value of social ties”. (Gurevitch, 2001, p. 96)

- “a key stage of the process is to ensure that student views are translated into action and subsequently that students are informed of the improvements… it demonstrates the value of individuals' responses and the importance of their participation”. (Watson, 2003, p. 145).

(as cited in Troshina & Burns, 2016)

Notes and observations from the meetings

Good things

- You know straight away if something is not working (activities, etc.)

- Anonymous – people are free to express their views

- Sts get more ownership and become less passive

- You and they become more reflective

- Show you are listening

Challenges

- Conflicting demands

- Some things you can’t change

- Time management (this is a good thing too; helps you be more time aware)

Overall process• ‘Action research’ framework

(Troshina & Burns, 2016)

So what do they want, actually?

What do you think your students want from you?..

• More discussions

• Sharing personal experiences

• TED Talks, videos

• More examples

• Pace (higher/lower)

• Games

Implications

• Continuous feedback from students is recommended

• “Close the loop” explicitly: make it clear that you’re responding to students’ feedback

• Can benefit confidence, classroom rapport, student satisfaction, and course content and materials

• Start early in the course

• Regularly through the semester

• Every class may be too much for some students/teachers

• Try different tools, both paper and online (ideas: Socrative, Padlet, Today’s Meet)

(Troshina & Burns, 2016)

• Helps to establish more egalitarian communication between teachers and students, address the issue of perceived power imbalance and assist development of leadership qualities in students

(Troshina & Tsang, 2017)

I want to try CSF – what do I do next?

Talk to Ksenia

Office: FG301

Phone: 34008329

ReferencesBorg, S., & Al-Busaidi, S. (2012). Learner autonomy: English language teachers’ beliefs and practices. ELT Journal, 12(7), 1-45.

Cadman, K. (2005). Towards a ‘pedagogy of connection’ in critical research education: A REAL story. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(4), 353-367.

Chen, Y., & Hoshower, L. B. (2003). Student evaluation of teaching effectiveness: An assessment of student perception and motivation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28(1), 71-88.

Ellwood, C. (2009). Uninhabitable identifications. Unpacking the production of racial differences in a TESOL classroom. In R. Kubota & A. Lin (Eds.), Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education (pp.101-117). New York and London: Routledge.

Gurevitch, Z. (2001). Dialectical dialogue: The struggle for speech, repressive silence, and the shift to multiplicity. The British Journal of Sociology, 52(1), 87-104.

Harvey, L. (2003). Student feedback. Quality in Higher Education, 9(1), 3-20.

Kobayashi, Y. (2011). Applied linguistics research on Asianness. Applied Linguistics, 32(5), 566-571.

Leckey, J., & Neill, N. (2001). Quantifying quality: The importance of student feedback. Quality in Higher Education, 7(1), 19-32.

Newton, J. D. (1988). Using student evaluation of teaching in administrative control: The validity problem. Journal of Accounting Education, 6(1), 1-14.

Pounder, J.S. (2007). Is the student evaluation of teaching worthwhile? An analytical framework for answering the question. Quality Assurance in Education , 15 (2), 178-191.

Shevlin, M., Banyard, P., Davies, M.N.O. & Griffiths, M.D. (2000). The validity of student evaluations in higher education: Love me, love my lectures? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 25, 397-405.

Spooren, P. (2011). On the credibility of the judge: A cross-classified multilevel analysis on students’ evaluation of teaching. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 36 (2010) 121–131 doi:10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.02.001.

Troshina, K., & Burns, C. (2016, May 16). Closing the Loop: Teachers' Responses to Continuous Student Feedback. Paper presented at 18th Annual International Conference on Education, Athens, Greece.

Troshina, K., & Tsang, J. (2017) Fostering learner autonomy through continuous student feedback in pursuit of praxis and establishment of I-Thou dialogue in an EFL Classroom. In independent Learning Association conference proceedings, Wuhan, China [paper accepted for publication]

Wagenaar, T. C. (1995). Student evaluation of teaching: Some cautions and suggestions. Teaching Sociology, 64-68.

Watson, S. (2003) Closing the feedback loop: Ensuring effective action from student feedback, Tertiary Education and Management, 9(2), 145-157, doi: 10.1080/13583883.2003.9967099.