Project Aims

Sheffield Hallam University is keen to explore the potential of technology-enabled feedback to improve student learning. The aim of this research project is to evaluate how a range of technical interventions might encourage students to engage with feedback and formulate actions to improve future learning. The interventions that are explored in this research study will be:

1. Online publication of grades and feedback. Sheffield Hallam is promoting the widespread and consistent adoption of the Blackboard Grade Centre (previously Blackboard Gradebook) as the primary tool for publication of grades and feedback in order to:

• enable students to easily track progress and see how performance on different assessment tasks builds to an overall profile for module;
• present marks and feedback alongside learning materials enabling 'in context' feedback, linking directly to materials to review;
• return feedback directly and efficiently to the students.

2. Adaptive release of grades. Integral to adoption of the Blackboard Grade Centre, a customised Assignment Handler extension has been developed to support effective feedback online. One of the key features of Assignment Handler is the adaptive release of grades, encouraging students to engage with their written feedback and identify key learning points in order to activate the release of their mark. The key learning points can then be linked into their personal development planning.
3. Linking feedback to assessment criteria. As one approach to presenting feedback to students, Sheffield Hallam University is exploring the use of an electronic Feedback Wizard that generates feedback aligned with assessment criteria. This tool allows tutors to generate individual feedback documents for an entire student cohort. Each document includes an assignment-specific feedback template containing a matrix of assessment criteria and feedback comments, and other remarks individually written for that student.

We aim to explore which elements of the particular interventions add most value, e.g. the extent to which the timely delivery of feedback supports effective forward planning, and whether withholding marks and aligning feedback to explicit assessment criteria does encourage deeper reflection upon the written feedback given.