Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
For learners, feedback is inseparable from assessment, especially when it is relevant, constructive, accessible and timely. Videos have been successfully used in the School of Engineering at Cardiff University to provide personal and engaging design project feedback, providing students with a comprehensive and extensive commentary compared to traditional written feedback. Giving clear, concise feedback on summative assessments needs to reflect on what students did well, how they can improve and why. We found that videos can provide a far more detailed response and takes no longer than preparing well considered written feedback. However, distributing feedback to students can be laborious due to the lack of integration between our video recording and virtual learning environment system. The ‘extra’ feedback provided in videos, especially around visual and audio (tonal) cues provides far more authenticity to the remarks provided, being more aligned to ‘mentoring’ than just being feedback. The recordings also provide permanence, allowing students to watch them again but also highlights the static and passive nature of feedback ie how do we close the feedback loop? Pedagogically, our videos showed better alignment towards ‘mastery-orientated’ feedback, that guides students towards mastery rather than a fixed notion of performance or compliance while addressing how to deal with uncertainty. Student comments have been wholly positive while module enhancement scores have improved. Students praise the comprehensive reasoning provided and guidance on how to improve their performance. Reflections on our practices includes how best to prepare these videos, manage student expectations and closing the feedback loop, while enabling students to comprehend higher-learning outcomes for deeper learning.
I am a Civil and Structural Engineer who has over 22 years of academic and 15 years of industrial experience. As the Director of Postgraduate Teaching in Engineering at Cardiff University, I am responsible for the development of our postgraduate degree schemes. My teaching practice has transformed and evolved to engender a more collaborative environment for self-learning, autonomy and independent thinkers to thrive. Embracing inclusivity and diversity has informed my understanding of the diverse nature of learners, by adopting learning taxonomy into the curricula and changing staff practices.