Director of Education, Director of Learning Development - Queen Mary Engineering School, Xi'an, China, Reader in Science & Engineering Education
A new Feedback Hub is being trialled in the School of Engineering and Materials Science to help students identify and make use of verbal feedback to boost their learning.
“Through my education practice, I’ve identified that students have a lack of understanding of when they are receiving feedback,” says Dr Maria Romero-Gonzalez, Director of Education for the School of Engineering and Materials Science. “Talking to students, I realised that they believe feedback is only a formal process that comes in writing, and they don’t receive feedback in any other way.”
Dr Romero-Gonzalez says the oral feedback that teaching staff give to students is extensive and can range from suggestions on what to do in the summer to gain professional skills to very specific comments, such as how to use the correct referencing style, that could have an impact on students’ marks.
She continues: “Formally, when we write, we use things like headings, but in normal speech we don’t do that. Identifying the opportunities, both for the person who’s giving feedback and the person who is receiving feedback, is difficult.”
Dr Romero-Gonzalez applied for Westfield funding to develop a practical approach to help students to identify and respond to feedback. She worked with two recent graduates to co-create a short online course. “Bringing students with you is crucial,” she explains. “If you don’t involve people in the decision making, you can run into the problem that nobody wants the tool you create.” The graduates also gained some vital skills, such as project management and working to deadlines.
Bringing students with you is crucial. If you don’t involve people in decision making, you can run into the problem that nobody wants the tool you create.
Together, they consulted with students to create and refine their plans. The result is the Feedback Hub, a flexible, do-it-yourself short course for students that could be used by students anywhere. “It gives you an introduction to raise awareness of all those feedback opportunities that you experience in life. It shows how you can take that feedback and decide whether to ignore it, act on it or put it aside for action later.”
In parallel, Dr Romero-Gonzalez has produced something similar for teaching staff that includes examples of how to give more effective feedback. “This is often as simple as saying ‘I’m going to give you feedback’. When you say that, people wake up and listen. You’re adding a verbal title and creating space for feedback.”
The Feedback Hub was launched at Queen Mary’s Festival of Education in March 2022 and is undergoing pre-testing with students and staff. “We’ve had good feedback from students so far. Everybody seems to love the interactive nature and fast-pace, and the different ways we present the information, such as flashcards and video.”
In the Autumn, all 400 first year students at the School of Engineering and Materials Science will take the course. “It’s a live resource so we can fine tune it. We’re now designing an evaluation that will be embedded in the first semester.”
Evaluation will include a short questionnaire that all users will take at the end of the course, two student focus groups and interviews with academics to gauge whether they perceive any change in the students who have taken part.
Dr Romero-Gonzalez adds: “We need to look for long-term change, and that’s difficult to assess, but I hope this will mean an improved experience of learning. I hear frustration from both sides with students saying that there’s been no feedback and staff knowing that they have given feedback, but maybe not in writing. When those comments stop, I’ll know we have changed something.”
Working on this project did wonders for my confidence, it gave me a sense of responsibility to know that I could make decisions to influence the content of a learning resource that will benefit a lot of students. I've been using a lot of the skills I've learnt on the internship, including project management, but the main I think is being inclusive when creating different resources.— Student co-creator