My students are very close to completing their projects and are now at the stage where we are asking them to reflect on their journeys as researchers. Recently, they were given a brief to submit a draft version of an Evaluative Report of their research projects for feedback.
MAAI tutorials take place on Monday afternoons and the submission deadline for the draft report was 12am GMT on Monday 2nd of November. As all, bar one, of my students are currently living in China, this did cause some confusion around what time the submission deadline actually was. Luckily though, it gives me just under a week to assess their drafts and put together some feedback ahead of the next tutorial. After reading the drafts, it is clear that they all need to improve in the same areas: providing personal reflections on their interventions, concisely summing up their projects, describing theories essential to their practice, and staying within the word limit.
At first I wasn’t sure of the best way to tackle the issue. I don’t wan’t to spend the whole tutorial giving 6 people the same feedback as that can get quite boring. I am also thinking about issues we have had with building a thriving ‘course community’. All of my MAAI colleagues have complained of the same issue, despite frequent encouragement, the students are reluctant to engage with one another and give each other feedback during tutorials. My personal experience is that any invitation to give their classmates feedback is either met with silence or hand clapping emojis, which is frustrating. I don’t think any of us want the students to rip each other to shreds during sessions, but we also want to encourage them to challenge, inspire and share resources with one another.
Thinking about some of the research I have been doing for my SIP project on building explicit strategy instruction into lessons may be the answer here. I have also been doing research on assessment for my case studies and found a very useful PDF from the Teaching & Learning exchange. In Eliminating Inequality in Formative Assessment, Duna Sabiri provides three top tips:
• Develop students’ conceptions of what makes ‘good’ work, e.g. by asking them to comment on previous students’ work.
• When students talk about their work, what are you listening for? How do you think students perceive and understand your formative assessment of their work?
• Help students interpret the feedback of others and develop their capacity to contest it.
Based on the above, I would like to create a group activity that invites the students to critique a previous MAAI evaluative report against the course Learning Outcomes and the brief they were given. Unfortunately I am not able to find an example of a past report on Moodle, so I think I will use an essay of my own In Praise of Shewolves which I wrote for a the recent Shades of Noir Terms of Reference Disabled People: The Voice of Many. Luckily the structure of my essay is close enough to the format outlined in the brief that they should be able to see the parallels between the two and evaluate it accordingly. I don’t think I will tell them that this is an essay I have written otherwise they will be reluctant to critique it properly! I also think I will need to provide them with individual written feedback as well, to allow for any absences and the ever present language barrier. That way they can take some time to reflect on the critique I have given them without the attention of the rest of the class.
Lesson Plan
Step 1 (20 mins)
- Inform students that we will be doing a group activity.
- Ask them if they would like me to record the session so they can refer back to it later.
- Make sure the draft evaluative report briefing document is on screen.
- Send them the links to the Learning Outcomes on Moodle and the Shewolves example essay and ask them to read through both.
- Remember to give them warnings 10 mins and 5 mins before the time is up in case anyone needs a few extra minutes.
Step 2 (60 mins – 10 mins per student)
- Invite each student to provide feedback on the example essay. What does it get right? What do they think could be improved?
- Ask them to consider what grade they would give the essay based on the brief and the Learning Outcomes.
- Check for learning, do they understand why I have asked them to do this?
Step 3 (50 mins)
- Ask students to evaluate their own draft reports against the Learning Outcomes and the brief.
- What do they think they could improve?
- What do they think they have done well?
- Is there anything from the example essay they think they could use in their own work?
- What do they think of the critiques given by the rest of the class? Do they agree or disagree with their colleagues’ assessment of the example essay?
Break (15 mins)
Step 4 (35 mins)
- Open up for questions about the brief and course in general.
- Check for learning, what will they be taking away from the tutorial?
- Remind them that they will also receive individual feedback.
- Finish.
Takeaways
- Students should leave with a better understanding of how to critically analyse their own work.
- Students will hopefully feel more comfortable giving one another feedback on their work.
- Students will have a better understanding of what a ‘good’ essay/reflective report looks like.
- Students will have a better understanding of the marking process from the perspective of the teachers.
- Greater transparency of the marking process.
- Students feel better prepared to edit their work ahead of the winter independent study period.
Bibliography
Sabri, D. 2020. Eliminating Inequality In Formative Assessment. [online] Arts.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/190153/AEM-Eliminating-Inequality-Formative-Assessment-PDF-288KB.pdf