SEDA presents: Fostering inner feedback to help students become better learners

In this session we will consider the concept of inner feedback (Nicol, 2019, 2020) and will explore its application to practice. We will outline the ways in which fostering students’ internal feedback via comparison-making processes can valuably support first-year student engagement and transitions, and discuss how deploying this new approach to creating ongoing informal feedback opportunities (Sambell et al, 2013) has recently offered important, manageable and educationally-driven strategies in the context of emergency remote teaching, as well as offering a productive approach in face-to-face scenarios.

Drawing on recent research conducted alongside Linda Graham at Sunderland University in the Childhood Studies area, and also linking to a major Irish research project, this workshop will briefly outline a process for fostering inner feedback. The case study involves the specific and deliberate design of opportunities for learners which follow a sequence of pedagogic steps (including produce, compare, review, recap and reflect). These aim to help students incrementally to gain a better understanding of, and further develop, their capabilities in a range of contexts throughout the module. Whilst the focus on inner feedback aims to enhance students’ performance in assignments it also, importantly, links strongly to developing their skills, content knowledge, approaches to learning, self-awareness and metacognition throughout the learning period. The workshop will briefly introduce a model and highlight the ways in which it has helped new learners move beyond unconscious competence (Race, 2001) towards knowing more about the ways of thinking and practising of the discipline as well as the quality of the works they produce.

Details

The session will be presented via Zoom on 14 December 1-2pm.

Contributors

Prof Kay Sambell is formerly a professor of Childhood Studies with an ongoing retained interest in the area, Kay Sambell is an expert in assessment for learning (AfL) in higher education. She was, with Liz McDowell, one of the originators of an influential model of AfL, and was Director of AfL Enhancement in the Centre for Excellence for Learning and Teaching (CETL) at Northumbria University. She has used this as a basis for her subsequent research work, leading to a wide variety of publications on, for example, assessment, feedback, student engagement and students as partners.

She worked for four years at Edinburgh Napier University as a professor of HE Pedagogy, and is a National Teaching Fellow (2002) and Principal Fellow of the HEA (2016). As a Visiting Professor at the University of Cumbria, she serves as President of the hugely popular Assessment in Higher Education conference, https://ahenetwork.org/registration-accommodation/ which brings the community of practitioners and researchers together to lead the continued development of assessment for learning internationally.

Nowadays Kay is an independent consultant who is fascinated by ways in which university students can become more effective learners and be well-prepared for their futures within and beyond the academy by learning through well-designed assessment and feedback processes.

Contact: kay@sambell.net

Twitter: @kay_sambell

Professor Sally Brown is an Independent Consultant in Learning, Teaching and Assessment and Emerita Professor at Leeds Beckett University where she was, until 2010, Pro-Vice-Chancellor. She is also Visiting Professor at Edge Hill University and formerly at the Universities of Plymouth, Robert Gordon, South Wales and Liverpool John Moores and at Australian universities James Cook Central Queensland and the Sunshine Coast.

She holds Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Plymouth, Kingston, Bournemouth, Edinburgh Napier and Lincoln.

She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) Senior Fellow and a National Teaching Fellow.

She is strongly committed to advancing assessment in higher education and is keen to see students during their degree studies continue to be supported to develop a range of skills and competences to support their careers and future lives.

She is author, co-author, editor or co-editor of thirty-five books on learning, teaching and assessment (some of which have been translated into Malaysian, Spanish, and Portuguese), 29 journal articles, 23 chapters in books, and many informal publications. These include the widely-acclaimed Covid-19 Assessment Collection, a series of guidance notes produced by Sally and Kay, which are all freely available for download at https://sally-brown.net/kay-sambell-and-sally-brown-covid-19-assessment-collection/. Several items, including the paper ‘Changing assessment for good: a major opportunity for educational developers’, are also available via the publications area of the SEDA site.

Contact: Sally@sally-brown.net

Twitter: ProfSallyBrown