Feedback to students on their work at university has been the subject of endless research as we attempt to find more effective ways to help them learn from their performance.\u00a0 We all know it is a struggle for lecturers to turn work around quickly but even when we manage to get it back to students in a timely way, there are numerous ways in which our efforts can be wasted:<\/p>\n
Even if we could tackle these barriers, they presuppose that the idea of lecturers commenting on work is basically the right thing to do if only we can find out how to assemble and communicate the message effectively.\u00a0 David Boud and his colleagues at Deakin University in Australia are coming at the problem from a different angle.\u00a0 To me, their work seems to be based on two ideas: one, that we need to prepare students to learn independently and, two, that we need to remember that the term feedback originates in a cyclical or two-way process of monitoring and changing a system and, not, as we commonly use it now, as a one way transmission of information.<\/p>\n
How do these relate to feedback?\u00a0 The link is evaluative judgement<\/em>.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with the first idea.\u00a0 The ability to engage in lifelong learning is a crucial 21st century graduate capability.\u00a0 However, traditional assessment practices privilege the teacher as expert, creating dependency amongst students for information about how well they are doing in the form of feedback and grades.\u00a0 Boud and colleagues argue that we need to help students develop the ability to seek, generate and use feedback on their performance so they can continue to find and use that information in whatever employment or learning context they find themselves in after higher education.<\/p>\n The second idea underpins the view that much conventional university feedback is \u2018dangling data\u2019 (Boud 2016).\u00a0 We send a feedback \u2018signal\u2019 out but no response is required or checked for. \u00a0We often don\u2019t know if the student has grasped what we say or made any adjustment to their understanding.\u00a0 The feedback cycle is broken. \u00a0All the effort that staff put into creating the feedback \u2018signal\u2019 is of little use if it does not result in adjustment to the student\u2019s understanding.<\/p>\n Evaluative judgement<\/em> takes an alternative perspective on feedback, using it to support students\u2019 ability to learn from their performances but also to continue learning once they leave university. Evaluative judgement<\/em> is defined by Ajjawi et al (2018) as the \u201ccapability to make decisions about the quality of work of self and others\u201d.\u00a0 Employing assessment opportunities to help students grasp the expectations (standards, quality) of assessment tasks, judge their work in relation to those expectations and take action to improve builds on existing concepts such as formative assessment, peer review and assessment literacy.\u00a0 It gradually transfers the agency, albeit scaffolded, for generating and using feedback from the tutor to the student.\u00a0 It involves strategies such as developing and working with criteria, seeking feedback, active engagement with varied exemplars of work, self and peer review and feedback dialogues.\u00a0 Lecturers continue to provide feedback but within an evaluative judgement framework.\u00a0 Evaluative judgement<\/em> attempts to create a virtuous feedback cycle where students are increasingly able to understand the \u2018signals\u2019 from multiple sources and take action in response.<\/p>\n It is argued that Evaluative judgement<\/em> is linked to raising achievement as a greater understanding of standards enables students to improve their work. The skills of evaluative judgement are also important for graduates to be safe and effective professionals with the ability to judge their own performance against the appropriate standards.\u00a0 Such skills allow students to know whether their work is up to standard and, importantly, when they need to ask for help from others or undertake further learning.<\/p>\n The imperative to develop Evaluative Judgement <\/em>is changing approaches to assessment feedback where the emphasis is less on monologic information (Nicol 2010), delivered in one direction from teacher to student, and more on dialogic methods. Feedback should serve the function of progressively enabling students to better monitor, evaluate and regulate their own learning, independently of the teacher.<\/p>\n I am looking forward to working with Lancaster colleagues in the workshop: Developing evaluative judgement: using assessment to create 21st<\/sup> century graduates <\/strong>on 18th<\/sup> April.\u00a0 It will be an opportunity to debate this emerging idea for assessment reform.\u00a0 Does it stand up to scrutiny? Can it be adopted in our massified system with large class sizes, limited opportunity for dialogue with students and moving on every unit to different teachers who may not know about past performance?\u00a0 Can students be helped to grasp the idea? The workshop will examine the theoretical background but also devote a substantial proportion of the time to exploring a range of strategies for developing evaluative judgement through our assessment methods and enabling delegates to consider the implications and possibilities for their own teaching.\u00a0 I look forward to seeing you there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Ajjawi, R. (in press) Conceptualising evaluative judgement for sustainable assessment in higher education<\/em>\u00a0 in Boud et al (in press)<\/p>\n Boud, D (2016) Rethinking feedback for greater impact on learning, Presentation to HUBS workshop,<\/em> University of Bristol.<\/p>\n Boud, D & Molloy, E (2012) Feedback in higher and professional education, London: Routledge<\/em><\/p>\n Boud, D. et al (in press) Developing Evaluative Judgement: Assessment for Knowing and Producing Quality Work<\/em> . Routledge<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Twitter handle @Sue_Bloxham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feedback to students on their work at university has been the subject of endless research as we attempt to find more effective ways to help them learn from their performance.\u00a0 We all know it is a struggle for lecturers to turn work around quickly but even when we manage to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-and-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9DFCd-1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/teachlearnshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}