CELT Good Practice Exchange

CELT | Good Practice Exchange

Transcript forFormative and Summative Feedback by Sallie Spilsbury

“My name is Sallie Spilsbury and I am a lecturer in the Law School and I teach level 6 on the undergraduate LLB programme. In the unit that I lead, we have an assessment, a coursework assessment, that requires the students to give advice to a notional client as if they were a trainee in a legal department.It is in the form a memo of advice so it has a typed word limit of 2000 words.They have to set out a memo that is written in a way that is appropriate for a professional context and it has to give very direct, practical and specific advice. For this particular assessment, which is unlike most assessments, we are not really interested in any critical evaluation. It is very much has a direct target at employability skills. This is a new kind of assessment for the students so in workshop two we introduce the assessment by giving them a memo that we have prepared and ask them to critique it from a structural point of view, kind of how we have put it together, what’s good, what works about it. And then we move that forward, requir[ing] the students in a different question to produce a formative memo themselves. So, a formative memo of advice, having had the benefit of critiquing our memo.They hand that in individually and that is marked and they get feedback, individual feedback on that formative assessment, which is then followed up by a one-to-one appointment with a tutor. The next stage is that they prepare their summative assessment, which they then submit, and we would give them full feedback, full written feedback on their summative performance at that point as well.

The feedback that we give on that formative is in three stages. The first stage is that we would mark the formative assessment and we give written feedback. That is full feedback and then we also give them a summary of their performance, and a mark for the formative assessment. What we are very much looking to do with that formative feedback is to build confidence because this is a new type of assessment for the students so we are as much about telling what they are doing right as what they could improve. It is confidence building but at the same time, giving them tools improve when it comes to the summative assessment. So that is the written feedback which the students receive by email within a week of submitting the formative assessment, so it is prompt, it is in their mind. The second stage in that as part of their workshop programme, the students have to reflect on their formative feedback and that is done in a prescribed way. So we give them some instructions about the kind of things they should be thinking about. Stage three is a one-to-one appointment with a tutor to go through our written feedback but also the work the students have done to reflect on that feedback. That is where we really underscore the fact that feedback is this two way process, it is a dialogue.Most students, when they come to that meeting, and the vast majority of them are taking it very seriously, what they wanted to know what ‘how do I improve me grade, how can I get a 2.1 or a first’. And because of the way we had structured the activity actually it was quite easy in the context of the interview to turn that back and to say to student 'you tell me how you can improve that grade', which is obviously a much more positive and engaged way of responding to feedback. So that is really this cycle around the formative assessment.

The feedback we give on the summative assessment has a different objective to the formative assessment because the students will not be doing an assessment in the same form in the future. So the emphasis is on pulling out generic skills because the formative and summative assessment is a memo of advice, so that is a particular way of presenting information, but the generic skill of problem solving is something that pervades the whole of the law degree and it is those same generic skills that are just being presented in a different way in the coursework.So with the summative feedback, we are picking up on those generic skills so that we can be useful to the students in preparing for their coursework and their exams in this subject but in other subjects as well. So where a student has used legal authority, for example, in a way that makes their advice very convincing, that is a generic skill and we would highlight that. Where they had not done that, we would highlight that and say this is really something to work on because it is going to benefit your future assessments. That was the first objective of the summative feedback. The second main objective was actually to get the students to reflect on the employability skill they had developed through the course because they could now write a memo of advice suitable for a professional context, whether it is a legal context or any other context. And I really wanted to highlight to the students that they had done that, they had achieved it and also they had evidence that they could use in job applications, for example, or in interviews to show that they had achieved it. The first paragraph in the summative feedback was saying 'well done, you have now been able to demonstrate that you can produce a competent/good/very good/excellent memo of advice', to just reinforce that for them.

I think they like the individual appointments. I think they found that very useful, that one-to-one discussion that they can have in addition to written feedback,that chance to talk around the points that we have made and just the individual attention, I think. I think they like the fact that their work seems to be being taken very seriously. They also like the fact that the positives are identified for them and then the constructive nature is the third things that they had identified. They say it is very clear, very specific feedback. It is detailed and they feel they know how to improve to the next grade. So it is maximum use value for them, I think.”

Quotes from Sallie’s student nomination for the Student Union Teaching Award for Outstanding Feedback 2014:

“This person provides feedback that contains considerable detail on how to improve work and move the grade up to the next level. They also offer an individual appointment to each student for discussing feedback in detail and responding to any queries or issues raised.”

“They clearly point out positive areas of work and offer constructive, detailed comments. As a result of the feedback provided I feel very confident that I understand what is expected for my end of year exams and how to achieve the best grade possible.”