It is well acknowledged that the provision of timely and considered feedback on performance is integral to learning, and the goal of providing quality feedback on assessed feedback within three weeks has been given great emphasis at Leeds Met in 2009-10:

While much good assessment practice exists at Leeds Met, this is an area requiring considerable improvement across the University and we must ensure that all students receive helpful and timely feedback, with a goal of returning assessed coursework to continuing students with comments within three weeks. Opportunities for ongoing formative oral feedback in classrooms, practice settings and studios should be provided at regular intervals throughout the teaching year.
Leeds Met ALT priorities 2009/10

The provision of feedback is also at the centre of the Faculty's Student action plan for 2009/10 which prioritises the 'consistent return of assessed work to students by three weeks with consistent and high quality feedback'.

The use of technology can support this goal by increasing the options available for giving feedback to students and making the process quicker and/or more effective for both staff and students. This page aims to provide:

• An overview of some of the possibilities
• Notes and how-to guides on using the tools and techniques
• Examples of how they have been used in the Faculty

Rob Shaw takes a lead on this area for LTU and will be developing the examples below. If you would like any information in the meantime, please get in touch on 27703 or send me an email.

Audio feedback

The use of audio feedback has had lots of good press within and beyond Leeds Met recently, and there are a number of potential advantages to recording spoken feedback which have made it popular with staff in a range of subject groups within the Faculty. This page will provide examples along with notes on producing and distributing audio feedback for individuals or groups.

Turnitin GradeMark for online marking and the collection, sharing and reuse of comments

Turnitin GradeMark tool is automatically made available when a piece of work is submitted via Turnitin. The tutor can access a view of the student assignment and add comments which are automatically returned to the students on a pre-selected date. There is also the possibility of creating and sharing comment banks and accessing 'standard' comment sets concerning key issues such as referencing, punctuation and academic style.

GradeMark for the creation and sharing of assignment rubric sheets

The GradeMark tool can provide an effective method of producing and sharing assignment criteria sheets. The tutor can create a criteria sheet which is accessible to tutors whilst marking the piece of work (the student work is displayed on screen with the criteria sheet displayed in a frame at the bottom of the screen). The tutor can then test the quality of the particular aspect against the criteria sheet and mark this directly on screen. When the piece of work is returned to the student, the criteria sheet is made available with the selections highlighted.

Online feedback on reflective journals

Reflective diaries are a common learning tool in the Faculty for developing skills in reflection and self-directed learning. Use of the journal-style discussion board in X-stream can provide a useful option for monitoring entries and providing timely feedback. This page will present examples from the Faculty of how this has added value to the development of reflective skill and the assessment of reflective work.

Peer feedback via discussion boards

Peer feedback activities can provide a highly effective method of ensuring that each individual receives extended feedback on their work. The process can be highly developmental both for the giver and receiver of the feedback. The tutor's task shifts from one of actually providing the feedback to one of providing a framework for students to do this appropriately and monitoring the process. Discussion boards can provide a useful mechanism for organising the peer feedback process. The task framework and criteria is clear and available for further reference. Students can ask and answer questions relating to their feedback. The whole process is made visible to the tutor providing a straightforward way for the process to be monitored and allowing for any interventions that are needed to be made in a time-efficient way.

Screen recordings

There are a number of tools which make it straightforward to create narrated screen recordings and distribute them to the students. It is possible to bring up a piece of work on the screen and record yourself talking through it, using the mouse to point to particular features and referring to further resources. In situations where audio feedback is appropriate, this can add further richness to the quality of the feedback. This technique can be particularly useful when creating feedback for the whole group as it can be an efficient and rich method of presenting model answers or common errors. The videos produced can be added to an X-stream module for future reference/revision.