Rethinking Feedback
“The most powerful single influence is feedback”(Gibbs, p9) With this statement in mind I have rarely sought out an autoassessing option, as I felt in the past that the feedback must be based on thoughtful personal interaction between the teacher and student. However, I was surprised when reading that “shat achieved the learning was the quality of student engagement in learning tasks, not teachers doing lots of marking.” (Gibbs, p8) and that “the trick when designing assessment regimes is to generate engagement with learning tasks without generating piles of marking.”(Gibbs, p8) In light of this new approach I engaged with the quiz building assignment more genuinely. Creating the quiz was not too difficult, and as most things get easier with practice I can see a lot of opportunities to employ this time of autoassessing quiz. In fact, this form of testing creates more breathing room for a teacher to interact with students personally, and to assess learning informally through conversation and questioning. In this way the teacher can shift the learning focus as needed based on the tests and the conversations with learners, which may be more fruitful. Another interesting idea which came from the reading as well is the idea that this form of autoassessment can compliment a broader array of assessment strategies which are not dependent upon the teacher for marking. For example “Time and effort can also be captured through social pressure, for example: the potential embarrassment of the poor quality of your work being seen by colleagues, as when a seminar presentation is assessed, or when a laboratory report is written and displayed publicly in the form of a poster” (Gibbs, p14). The experience of stretching my assessment methods has been surprising, and rewarding.
References:
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Accessed online 11 March 2009 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf