TIMELY AND HELPFUL FEEDBACK

1
TIMELY AND HELPFUL FEEDBACK

• George MacDonald Ross
• Director, PRS Subject Centre
• School of Humanities, 5 Sept 2006

2
Programme

• The Subject Centre and the School
• Continuing Professional Development
• Evidence that timely and helpful feedback is a
  problem
• What we can do about it
• Future events

3
The SC and the School

• The SC one of the 4 constituent parts of the
  School of Humanities
• Ring-fenced funding
• Role to provide subject-specific materials and
  events on learning and teaching for the School
  and more widely

4
CPD

• Continuing Professional Development compulsory
  from 2006
• The SC offers subject-specific events
• It will respond to demand any suggestions
  welcome

5
NSS

• The National Student Survey, 2005 and 2006
• PRS did well, Leeds did badly
• Worst feature timeliness and helpfulness of
  feedback
• University policy to improve

6
Partnership Agreement

• Formerly Student Charter
• Schools will
• provide systematic and timely feedback on
  assessed work
• What does systematic mean?

7
Languages TQEF Project

• SMLC and Classics commissioned a study by Mouchel
  Parkman
• Some of the findings are shocking (but consistent
  with other research)
• Todays event doubles as dissemination of the
  TQEF Project

8
Student suggestions

• Return assignments within an agreed deadline
• Feedback should be positive, and give advice on
  how to improve
• Assessment criteria should be more explicit and
  consistent
• Assessment should be more frequent

9
Todays objectives

• Pool ideas for
• Improving the helpfulness of feedback
• Returning assignments more quickly
• Next PDP event

10
Thank you for listening

• George MacDonald Ross
• Department of Philosophy, University of
  Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
• g.m.ross_at_leeds.ac.uk
• http//prs.heacademy.ac.uk