Scholarship Seminar

‘How students use teachers’ feedback in online adult education’
Carme Durran – Institut Obert de Catalunya

A cross-faculty event organised by PRAXIS Scholarship and Innovation Centre

Thursday 19^th September 10.30 – 12.30

This event is open to everyone in the OU with an interest in the scholarship of learning and teaching in H.E. Places are limited and are on a first come basis –  here

Programme:
10.00 Registration and coffee
10.20 Introduction – Lucy Rai
10.30 Carme Durran
12.30 Close

In this seminar, we are going to present the first phase of ongoing research about the students' response to the teachers’ digital feedback on a task in a context of virtual learning for adult education at the Open Institute of Catalonia (Institute Obert de Catalunya, IOC). It focuses on the impact of digital feedback on students’ learning. That is a pilot research based on a survey, the results of which have been used to validate its functionality in relation to the research's goals.

The research focuses on exploring the impact of digital feedback in the context of the GES (Graduate of Secondary Education for adults) at IOC, a public school dependent on the Department of Education of the Generalitat de Catalunya that offers non-university distance studies (GES, training courses, baccalaureate, languages).  The students of GES are adults who did not obtain a graduate in compulsory secondary education at the time. For this reason, the main objective of these studies is to provide students with the basic competences to act and intervene in today's society, focusing in a significant way on the development of the autonomy of students to provide them with Strong strategies to face lifelong learning. These are students who feel that they failed in their studies, so it is also necessary to ensure that they regain their self-confidence and their self-esteem as learners.

The initial design of the survey envisaged the evaluation by the students of the teacher's comments and their usefulness to improve the tasks. We wanted to confirm, from the statements of the students, both the clarity of this feedback and the impact on the improvement of the tasks. The survey contained seven closed multiple choice questions and one open-ended question. The first ones sought to capture the opinions of students regarding the utility of feedback based on the content, extent or clarity of the information; the relationships between the students who respond to the survey and the obtained mark, and the effect of the retroaction in the repetition of the task. The open question was intended to recover the student's memory of the content of the feedback to observe which aspects they considered most relevant.

This pilot test sought to validate the research instrument in order to implement the definitive investigation during the first quarter of 2019-20. In a second phase, it is planned to develop a second qualitative research based on interviews with different student profiles and in the analysis of the student's changes to the tasks after having received teacher's feedback.

For further information please contact: Shiny Hussain, PRAXIS Centre Manager
01908 653517