Source: https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1595
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 08:17:18+00:00

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Imperfect feedback from a fellow student provided almost immediately can have much more impact than more perfect feedback from an expert many weeks later. Students learn a lot by doing peer assessments – particularly when done as a group activity.
The posting below, written by Carl Weiman and Sarah Gilbert, gives a nice summary of the type of assessments that support student learning. The summary is of the longer article by G. Gibbs and C. Simpson, on “Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Student Learning,” in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, V. 1, pp. 3-31, (2004). http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs and Simpson 2004-05.pdf Reprinted with permission.
• What is tested in a course dominates what students think is important and what they do.
• Effective feedback is the most powerful single element for achieving learning. Feedback that is not attached to marks can be highly effective.
• Students who focus on picking up cues as to what will be on exams and study accordingly do much better than those who do not. Students often realize this form of studying is not the same as studying to master (i.e. understand and apply) the course material.
• Students prefer courses with a significant marked assignment component, feeling that such courses provide them with more practice and feedback, and the assessment is fairer.
• Much assessment fails to engage students with appropriate types of learning.
• Exam scores correlate very weakly with post graduate performance. Scores on marked assignments are better predictors than exams of long term learning retention.
• engage students in appropriate forms of study/effort.
2. Students need to have a clear concept of the assigned task and of learning in the discipline. The criteria for grading the assignment needs to be explicit and understood by the student.
• is supported by mechanisms that require the student to attend to and act upon the feedback.
It is particularly challenging to have frequent assignments and timely feedback in large-enrollment classes. Below are a few examples of ways to do this.
• Problem-solving sessions associated with quizzes or homework. This could be informal (groups of students voluntarily get together to work on problems with or without TA or instructor present) or formal (tutorial, recitation, workshop with TA and/or instructor using Socratic approach).
• Regular in-class group exercises done in stages that include partial deliverables (sketches, lists, worksheet answers, etc) which are discussed in class. Simply working in groups provides “instant” peer feedback (as above), and the whole class benefits from feedback that results from the instructor-led discussions at intermediate stages of the exercise.
• Just-In-Time Teaching:⁵ Web-based assignments due a short time before class, followed by discussion/lecture focusing on areas of student difficulty (often involves adjustment of teaching based on responses; for large classes, instructors usually go through a subset of the responses). Can also be implemented as quiz at start of class with electronically collected responses.
• Have some long-answer or essay-type questions on assignments, but grade only some of these (important to be clear to students that they will get some credit on a problem for turning something in, and a subset of those problems will be graded– students won’t know in advance which questions will be graded).
• Have multistage assignments with feedback in the middle that students need to use to complete assignment (way to get students to act on feedback).
• 2-Stage exams:⁷ students do the exam individually first, turn their answers in, and then repeat the exam in groups. Students get timely feedback from each other and learn from the exam via reasoning with peers. They usually do significantly better on the group part vs. the individual part.
Teaching students to monitor their own performance should be the ultimate goal of feedback. Continuous support for improving these skills will help students transfer learning to new situations and become effective lifelong learners.
¹ G. Gibbs and C. Simpson, “Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Student Learning,” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, V. 1, pp. 3-31, (2004).
²http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs and Simpson 2004-05.pdf Effective techniques are designing assignments to be of obvious benefit to the learning of the student, have substantial overlap with the exams, and have some portions of the assignment that involve “explaining in your own words”.
³ S. Bonham, “Reliability, Compliance, and Security in Web-Based Course Assessments,” Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research V. 4, paper 010106 (2008).
⁴ C. Crouch and E. Mazur, “Peer Instruction: Ten Years of Experience and Results,” American Journal of Physics, V. 69, pp. 970-977 (2001).
⁷ B. Gilley & B. Clarkston, “Collaborative Testing: Evidence of Learning in a Controlled In-Class Study of Undergraduate Students,” J. College Sci. Teaching, V. 43(3), pp. 83-91 (2014); G. Rieger & C. Heiner, “Examinations That Support Collaborative Learning: The Students’ Perspective,” J. College Sci. Teaching., V. 43(4), pp. 41-47 (2014).

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