June 12, 2018

As a community of impactful professionals we are each thinking about how to best direct our efforts to secure results for our students and our communities.

We have an accurate awareness of our own selves and of the situation around us and we value the individual roles of those around us in supporting our students and communities.

Feedback and assessment are two sides of the evaluation coin. We talk about how we undertake formative assessment to provide information to students to promote learning. However, formative assessment also provides feedback about how we can direct our teaching to promote student learning.

This week’s bulletin is the last in our series examining teaching strategies that support the nine Dimensions of Teaching (Crisp et al., 2009 – see below).

Dimension 9: Seeks feedback on students' understanding and acts on this accordingly.

In 360-Degree Assessment, Dr Oliver Dreon looks at the combination of peer assessment, self-assessment and instructor assessment to provide feedback for growth and development of student learning.

In Classroom Assessment Techniques, Professor Tom Pusateri discusses how we can use feedback to improve our teaching.

In Taking the Class Temperature, Moore & Arnold suggest that we also need to look at affective feedback to best promote positive learning outcomes for all students.

By Dr Oliver Dreon

Source: https://www.magnapubs.com/magna-commons/?video=14766

(See below for instructions on how to access the CSU free subscription to this resource).

Dr Dreon drew from the Carol Dweck's book Mindset to switch his classes from "feedback for compliance" to "feedback for growth and development".

QUOTE: “I think ... that more so than to help support and give feedback for the student, it’s to give feedback for us as instructors, to give us some sort of idea of what we need to do differently or teach. So it’s feedback for our instruction rather than feedback for student development.”

Firstly, he compares the advantages and disadvantages of the practices of Peer Assessment vs. Self-assessment vs. Instructor Assessment, supported by references in the supplementary material.

Then, he discusses how he has drawn on an industry model of assessment to combine all three types of assessment into "360-degree assessment". This method is intended to increase student ownership and provide more motivation for their own learning.

He provides examples of his use of this technique in an group work activity in a first-year class and in a postgraduate written assignment.

Key components include:

• up front completion of a Growth Mindset survey (Dweck)
  
• explanation of the process to students
  
• well-designed rubrics provided to students (e.g. VALUE Teamwork rubric)
  
• exemplars with discussion of components
  
• used as formative assessment throughout the session to provide growth towards the final summative assessment
  

The types of assignments suggested for 360-degree assessment are problem-solving, writing assignments, group work, lab work, art assignments, all of which can receive value through formative feedback from peers, instructors and self-assessment.

A link to Dr Dreon's blog will provide further information and resources:

the8blog.wordpress.com

Reference:

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Incorporated.

Presentation handouts, full transcripts and supplementary resources are available for download from the Magna Commons website if you don't have time to listen to the seminar.

By: Professor Tom Pusateri

Source: https://www.magnapubs.com/magna-commons/?video=11967

(See below for instructions on how to access the CSU free subscription to this resource).

Professor Pusateri approaches this topic from the perspective of using feedback to improve teaching practice. Based on the book Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo & Cross, 1993), he focuses on a handful of the 50 different methods contained in the book.

His rationale for choosing the CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques) are:

Formative assessment

• How well are students learning?
  
• When should I adapt my teaching?
  

Summative assessment (for Teaching Improvement, rather than student grading)

• How can I document my teaching skills? (for reflective practice, annual evaluations, promotion)
• What can I share with my colleagues?
  

Techniques include:

• Background knowledge probe
  
• Conceptual diagnostic test
  
• Strategic Pre-test/Post-test
  
• Misconception/Preconception check
  
• Classroom Opinion Poll
  
• Minute Paper and the Muddiest Point
• Subject-related self-confidence surveys and Teacher-designed feedback forms
• GIFT - Group Instructional Feedback Technique
• JITT - Just-in-time-teaching - Flipped classroom strategy

The discussion of each of these technique provides explanations of how you might use the information to better address student needs in current sessions. It also helps to develop insights into how you might alter future offerings based on your analysis of the feedback.

QUOTE: “The end of this session, I want to talk about how you might be able to use what you're finding in classroom assessment techniques to document changes in your teaching and hopefully changes in what students are doing within your class.”

The supplementary material for this session contains resources for different types of surveys, references, website links and information about technology resources.

As is common in seminars providing web links, some lateral thinking might be required to find some resources. The FLAG webite link no longer works, but the information can be found in a search for "field-tested learning assessment guide", the expanded version of the FLAG acronym. Well worth a look, with links to multiple layers of information about the various CATs.

Reference:

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college

teachers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Available from CSU Library, Wagga Campus.

Presentation handouts, full transcripts and supplementary resources are available for download from the Magna Commons website if you don't have time to listen to the seminar.

By Christina Moore and Daniel Arnold

Source: Faculty Focus

Cognitive feedback, both formative and summative, can provide information on how well students are learning their course and subject material. However, this brief article considers how "affective feedback" can provide information to explain why student learning may or may not be happening.

They argue that emotional indicators can explain why some students perform or attend poorly in response to subject content or activities. Further, while many opportunities are developed for cognitive feedback, often there are limited strategies incorporated for collecting or acting on affective feedback.

This article provides current references for further examination and suggests some strategies for collecting and working with affective feedback to promote student success, including:

• a weekly social forum
  
• survey at the beginning of a session
  
• progress report journal (mandatory)
  
• Help! Line
  
• reflection activities
  
• using technology affordances for feedback in large classes.
  

Do you have 20 minutes per week to learn new teaching tips?

Monday Morning Mentor ****Starting June 18****

Brrrr!!! It may be winter here, but it's summer break in the USA, so we have tapped in to the Monday Morning Mentor Summer Edition.

Every week for eight weeks we will receive a new topic,

"presented by respected academic peers, cover timely and relevant topics in only 20 minutes—long enough to provide actionable insights, but short enough to fit anyone’s schedule."

One new topic will be released each week (Monday in the US) and remain available until the end of the eighth week, August 12.

We have subscribed to two eight-week programs:

Traditional Collection, Wk 1, June 18: How Do I Release My Students' Natural Zest and Curiosity for Better Learning?

New Teachers Collection, Wk1, June 18: Copyright Crash Course: How Can I Stay on the Right Side of the Law?

Watch YAMMER and WHAT'S NEW for the announcement of availablity of the first topics.

Follow Teaching Tuesdays on Twitter.
Our Twitter feed includes links to further hints, tips and resources in the broader field of teaching in higher education. https://twitter.com/TeachingTuesday



Link to: Folder with all previous issues of Teaching Tuesdays

Dimension 9: Seeks feedback on students' understanding and acts on this accordingly

Indicative teaching strategies for demonstrating this dimension may include:

• seeking feedback progressively during the session e. g. through constant observation of interest level and engagement and by using specific questions to test understanding
• modifying the presentation to accommodate feedback messages
• seeking feedback towards the conclusion of the session to assist student to determine individual work to be consolidated

Adapted from: Crisp, G. et al (2009) Peer Review of Teaching for Promotion Purposes: a project to develop and implement a pilot program of external Peer Review of Teaching at four Australian universities, University of Adelaide, an ALTC-funded project, 2007-8. Final Project Report June 2009. Thanks to RMIT and UNSW.

The nine Dimensions of Teaching are the key focus areas that underpin the main elements in the Peer Review of Teaching Practice templates used at CSU for both formative teaching development or to evidence your teaching in, for example, your promotion application.

(See Peer Review of Educational Practice at CSU).

This article appeared in last Friday's Campus Morning Mail:

Attrition: it’s up to universities to do something about it

Commenting on findings in the Higher Education Standards Panel Final Report: Improving Retention, completion and success in higher education, the article drew attention to rises in student attrition at some Australian universities. Institutional factors contributed more to the explanation of attrition than did student characteristics with "some institutions supporting higher-risk students to succeed to greater effect than others".

In response to the report, Federal Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham agreed to all 18 of the report's recommendations and requested that TEQSA work to develop an implementation plan. He also stated

"A greater focus on student outcomes improves the employment prospects of students, benefits prospective employers and ultimately delivers better value for taxpayers."

The CSU Strategy 2017-2022: The CSU Drive to develop generic skills and graduate learning outcomes forms part of our strategy to improve student employment prospects.

You have access to a range of quality CSU resources to help you incorporate educational resources and techniques into your teaching. Check out the following:

• Teaching at CSU - the Division of Learning and Teaching website with links to resources for Teaching Staff, Online Learning, Assessment, Curriculum, Indigenous Curriculum, Workplace Learning, Technologies, Feedback and Analytics, and Learning Spaces.
  
• Resources for Learning and Teaching Academic and Professional Staff - searchable CSU database
  
• Learning Technologies - the starting point for a range of learning design options
• CSU Learning Exchange: Technologies in Context - a searchable database to promote online learning and teaching strategies
• The CSU wiki - a faculty-based source of learning and teaching information and strategies

Regular seminars on teaching-related topics are listed on the

CSU Professional Learning Calendar - accessed directly here

or from the Division of Learning and Teaching front page - accessed here

CSU Professional Learning Calendar: Feedback-driven learning: Simple strategies that support literacy and numeracy development. Bathurst 14 June 2018 at 1:00 pm.

OR

Drop In - Sessional Staff. Watch the calendar for the timing of these weekly online sessions.

This week - Adobe Connect session 15 June 2018 at 11:00 am

All CSU students and staff members have access to Lynda.com, an online subscription library that teaches the latest business, creative and software skills through high-quality instructional videos.

A search with a filter for Teacher Professional Development for 'feedback' returned 208 resources ranging from general teaching tips, to keynote lectures, to the specifics of various tools and applications for employing educational resources and techniques.

For example, Personal assessment feedback

A 1m 9s video, part of a 36-minute suite of short videos on Teaching Techniques: Creating Effective Learning Assessment.

Transforming Assessment, webinar session: 6 June 2018

Some of the winners of the UK e-Assessment Awards provided brief overviews of their category-winning e-Assessment practices. Information on this and future events, archived recordings of past sessions, and links to resources can be found on the website at transformingassessment.com

For those interested in e-Assessment, some useful links referred to in this session:

www.e-assessment.com

www.eassessmentawards.com

http://elevatemymath.com

The next webinar, to be held on 11 July 2018 is titled Transforming Feedback

Register for free at http://transformingassessment.com

All staff with a CSU email address have free access to our new

CSU subscription to the Magna Commons series of online seminars

Presentation handouts, full transcripts and supplementary resources are available for download if you don't have time to listen to the seminar.

How to subscribe

Staff with a CSU email address can obtain the Magna Commons CSU subscription code from Ellen McIntyre elmcintyre@csu.edu.au

A Magna Commons search for 'Feedback' produced 30 results. A further filter for 'Faculty' topics on 'Online Grading and Feedback' produced seven results, such as:

- Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback

Magna Commons suggests these seminars to watch in the coming month:

Whether focused on creating a diverse student body or a diverse curriculum, increasing student and faculty diversity calls for collaboration across campus. The Magna Commons June focus is on embracing diversity in its multiple forms. Below are some seminars related to DIVERSITY:

• Advanced Online Seminar: Transgender Students and Creating a Safe, Inclusive, and Legally Compliant Environment
• Three Secrets to Building Diverse and Inclusive Online Learning Environments
• Four Strategies to Engage the Multicultural Classroom

This week is the last of our series on the Dimensions of Teaching.

The next series will be based around teaching strategies to maximise positive student responses in the Subject Experience Survey and also maximising the response rate.

Access the full report of the national QILT 2017 Student Experience Survey to see the importance of this focus.

Suggest topics that you would like for Teaching Tuesdays; or
Share your own teaching tips article.

Click on the Green Contact Ellen McIntyre button (below, or at the top of the bulletin) to offer your suggestions.

Folder with all previous issues.

Issue#1 Group Work; Issue#2 Engagement; Issue#3 Engagement;

Issue#4 Academic Integrity; Issue#5 Feedback; Issue#6 Feedback;

Issue#7 Active Engagement; Issue#8 Building on Prior Learning;

Issue#9 Student Diversity;

Issue#10 Learning Outcomes; Issue#11 Deep Learning;

Issue#12 The Teaching-Research Nexus;

Issue#13 Improving Student Learning; Issue#14 Planning for Effective Student Learning

FoBJBS Newsletter: BOLD Issue#16

FoA&E Newsletter: NeXus Issue#3

Email: elmcintyre@csu.edu.au
Website: https://www.csu.edu.au/division/learning-and-teaching/about-us/learning-academy
Phone: +61 2 6933 4726
Twitter: @TeachingTuesday

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