Abstract:

This study explores how academic staff at the Norwegian Police University College (NPUC) can utilize peer feedback from students on teaching plans created by students in the instructor education courses to enhance the quality of these teaching plans. The NPUC has different instructor education courses structured with both police-related and pedagogical topics. In these courses, there are different work requirements. It is when the students have created their third teaching plan that instructors at the NPUC add peer feedback. The students also receive input from fellow students in order to be able to reflect on their own teaching plan and the teaching plan of their fellow students. Thus, our research question became: How can peer feedback improve student learning? In order to collect data pertinent to answer our research question, we used a self-developed questionnaire that contained 22 questions. The questionnaire was sent out to the students in two separate courses via e-mail on the learning platform Canvas used by the NPUC. 21 students filled out and completed the digital questionnaire, yielding a response rate of 55,3%. The questions were related to the participants' previous participation in peer feedback, the context in which participants had received peer feedback and the forms of feedback received for other work requirements. Furthermore, we asked questions about previous oral and written feedback, lesson plans and peer feedback, feedback and peer feedback, and participants perceived level of competence in the field of giving feedback. Finally, the participants were asked to ponder upon three open-ended questions where they could freely write their answers.

The three questions were:
1) If you made changes, what changes did you make?
2) If you experienced peer feedback as positive, what would you like to highlight?
3) Do you have any suggestions for improving the use of peer feedback on teaching exercises?

Participants answered that receiving peer feedback to a somewhat large extent gave them ideas on how to develop their own teaching plan. Also, participants indicated that to a somewhat large extent they felt that giving peer feedback was educational for them. On the other hand, participants also reported that they to a somewhat small extent thought that they had the competence to provide peer feedback at the time they did so. In addition, participants answered that they to a somewhat small extent used the peer feedback they received to change their teaching plan or teaching. The participants came up with some good suggestions for improvement points that was important to take with them to a new round of peer feedback. We can divide the suggestions into three main themes that relate to preparation, framework factors and discussing the subject. What most participants said the NPUC need to look at as potential for improvement was preparation, which means that the students need to know more about feedback, that the teacher comes up with topics to look at and also provides clear frameworks and guidelines. Participants also suggested that it is important to have enough time to prepare to give feedback, and a suggestion was that there should be three students in a group to provide broader feedback. The last suggestion was that the instructor needs to talk about pedagogy and that this will be a good exercise for the participants in order to prepare to give feedback.

Keywords:

Peer feedback, teaching plan, facilitation of learning, police instructor education.