Abstract:

The aim of this action research was to evaluate two feedback tools for a VLE (virtual learning environment) based module, in order to enhance student engagement with oral feedback. The reason for introducing these tools was to capture student use of oral feedback received throughout the module, and evaluate whether the application of the feedback received could help enhance student performance (e.g. task completion issues, out of class reflection, communication of progress, and final grade).

The intervention took place in Research Skills, a Level 5 (2nd year undergraduate) module, taken by 70-100 students each year. The module is compulsory across all science programmes, both Foundation and BSc. Students have a varied level of IT and numeracy skills. The module has traditionally suffered from low attendance and poor engagement with classwork tasks. This severely affected student success rate, since the module is assessed by coursework only; as a result, there were high number of resits every year.

The action research involved the use of an Excel based tool to record individual student classwork completion whilst providing immediate and personalised feedback. The tool was accessible to students and tutors to encourage and improve preparedness for class and stimulate self-evaluation. The second part of the research involved the use of a tailored feedback tracking sheet which required students to document their reflections and actions on the oral feedback received during the classwork completion checks. During the research we realised that, we not only had an overview of student engagement and performance, but could detect the topics that were the most challenging for the cohort. This further helped coordination and management of course planning, review sessions and student experience tracking.

Our experience supports a growing understanding of the role and value of oral feedback and student engagement in enhancing performance, especially with challenging courses such as this one. The results were also beneficial for student experience, to be able to harness the support of programme tutors and to tailor support to meet specific needs whilst maintaining student autonomy. An additional advantage was that, as this VLE course is on a web-based platform, the learning resources, class activities and assessments allowed seamless delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. The nature of formative tasks also proved less challenging to move from face-to-face to remote learning.

Keywords:

Oral feedback, assessment.