Marking: Providing feedback

Activity 3: The logistics of providing feedback

The logistics of providing feedback on students' assessment can cause difficulties for staff and students. For example, staff can become stressed due to high marking workloads, and may find it difficult to provide feedback promptly. Students may be dissatisfied with turnaround times and the kind of feedback they receive. The use of the online environment for submission, marking and returning assignments is becoming more common, and there are certainly some advantages to providing feedback electronically. It can be more immediate because the work can be sent directly to the marker and returned promptly to the students. However, where there are advantages, there can also be disadvantages. For example, there are some occupational health and safety issues associated with spending large amounts of time online, including postural problems and eye-strain.

There is a need to determine an appropriate balance between too much or too little feedback, providing it online or off-line, in-class, in groups or individually.

1. In March 2006, the Faculty of Education ran a seminar entitled: Assessment and Feedback: What Works? A number of staff from the Faculty shared their ideas on how they manage assessment in their units and how they provide feedback as efficiently as possible. Consider the summary of suggestions and ideas that were raised. To what extent are they appropriate in your discipline? To what extent do they match your practice? Is there a helpful suggestion you could try?
2. Refer back to the booklet on Managing Assessment: Student and Staff Perspectives (2 MB). Note that feedback is the fourth point in the Five-point Assessment Cycle. In relation to this, the following five questions are posed for your deliberation:
   • Is there a tight marking turn-around time so that students can learn from this assignment?
   • Are there any opportunities for students to discuss their marks and feedback comments with lecturers?
   • Does the written feedback and numerical grade match on each assignment?
   • Can the students understand the feedback comments?
   • Can the students apply the learning from the feedback to other areas of their work? (Higher Education Academy, p. 39)
   • These questions reiterate issues raised in previous sections of this module, and provide a succinct and relevant framework for discussions and seminars with colleagues. Consider running a seminar in your faculty or school. It can provide an excellent opportunity for learning from experienced colleagues about what works in your discipline area. Dissemination of the outcomes of the seminar will be helpful for other staff in your faculty, and across the institution.
3. The logistics of assessing group work can be considerable, and have been dealt with in the professional development module on group assessment.