Background

As part of Unit 5 on the MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise, there is an element of formative feedback based on a presentation that students give to the group. This is delivered as part of the in-person intensive teaching weekend (the remainder of the teaching is largely online). The topic of the presentation is:

“Provide an outline of your own specific strategy for personal career development, to enable you to use the ideas of this Unit and the course as a whole to support your continuing use of the reflective practioner concept in your personal and professional future.”

Unit 5 is approximately at the mid-point of the course so the topic enables students to look back over their journey with the course, thinking about what their goals were when they started, whether anything has changed and where they might aim for professionally in the future as a result of taking the course. It provides a good opportunity for student reflection plus it enables the students to get to know one another on a deeper level.

A key challenge is whether the feedback provided is sufficient to allow for learning / progress.

Evaluation

The presention is described as ‘formatively assessed’. Currently this consists of feedback / questions from the student cohort plus brief commentary from the tutor. As the topic is a personal one, it can be difficult to provide feedback on the actual content which can be of any real value. In my opinion, the learning mainly takes place by virtue of actually taking part in the task as it forces the students to take a reflective approach.

Feedback can be provided on the mechanics of the presentation (eg. use of slides, length, mode of delivery etc…) which may be of practical use to the student for furture presentations. Currently this type of feedback is only given to students where there is something obvious to comment on. I have found that in a group setting it can be challenging to deliver this type of feedback without sounding overly critical.

A further challenge is that not all students attend the face to face weekend in person so some will submit a recorded presentation which makes delivery of useful feedback more challenging. Perhaps in these situations, it would be appropriate to provide informal written feedback.

Moving Forwards

In terms of moving forward, I think the framing of the task will be imporant so rather than simply stating it as an assignment that factually needs to be completed, it should be presented in context of the mid-point of the course whith a narrative around why it is a useful activity to engage with and why it is relevant to the unit as a whole.

The task brings to mind the theory of constructive alignment whereby it’s not what the teacher does that produces learning – it’s what the student does (Biggs, 2003). Deeper engagement with the task will lead to greater outcomes for the student. From a practical standpoint, it may be worthwhile to introduce the task in the first lesson the unit so that students have more time to prepare and to more deeply engage with the task.

As the tutor charged with providing formative feedback, it might be useful for me to have some clear outcomes to feedback to the student on rather than a vague holistic feedback. For example, have they actually answered the question and referred to ideas from within the unit, could their presentation skills be improved and have they taken an appropriately reflective approach. It could also be useful to provide these questions to the students to aid effective peer feedback. I have been reading the ‘reducing referrals and resubmissions’ document which is helpful and suggests providing a clear check-list of what is expected of students.

The next iteration of this unit isn’t until November but I will write up thoughts on the task along with a list of actions so that I am prepared and can recall the planned actions when November comes.

Actions:

• Introduce the presentation at an earlier stage and provide greater context so that students have a greater understanding of how the task fits into the overall course.
• Produce a check list for students to make clear what is expected of them.
• Provide brief written feedback to those who don’t attend the session in person.

Reference:

Biggs, J. (2003). Aligning teaching for constructing learning.

Finnegan, T. (unknown). UAL: Reducing referrals and resubmissions. Accessed on 15/03/24 at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/190155/AEM-Reducing-referrals-PDF-304KB.pdf