One of my current classes is a two-term module focusing on academic skills. The module is titled: “Extended project”. Students have to write a 3000-word report on a topic of their choosing, to be submitted at the end of January, and then developed into a presentation for March. Students have two 1h 45min classes per week.

To give some background, the class is Foundation level at university – students do a full year of English along with Foundation level studies of their major before beginning Year 1 at university. My students are all science and engineering majors, overwhelmingly Arabic speakers with only 4 students out of 22 from elsewhere in the world (Congo, Albania, India and South Africa). It’s also an overwhelmingly male class with only 3 females students. Use of L1 in class is a challenge, and for most students, typically their reading and writing is a lower level than their speaking and listening. This impacts on their reluctance to read academic material and difficulties with making notes and developing written projects.

The Extended Project module has been redeveloped completely this year. Previously it was taught over 3 separate modules, taken over 2 terms with increasing level of complexity. To move it to one single module is a big shift and the development team were mindful of the difficulties of giving new international Foundation students such a long project at the beginning of their studies. The solution was to introduce 3 formative assessments before the summative 3000 word submission. These are: a proposal and an outline, both with a detailed form provided, then a 1000-word draft of a report section. The proposal is due in week 6, the outline week 9 and the draft week 11 (before Christmas). All work is submitted electronically through Turnitin, which makes online comments easier but printing out to discuss in class more difficult.

The class is taught in multiple sessions across the college and indeed across the UK using the same syllabus. Week 7 was earmarked as tutorials week to discuss their proposals. There was little guidance from the syllabus on how this was to be done, but there were no tutorial slots outside class, so these had to be incorporated into class time.

The class where my critical incident occurred was the first after the submission of the proposal the previous week. From looking at the submissions, 3 key areas arose: a lack of academic research undertaken, topics being too general without specifying a specific aspect of the topic (geographical or temporal focus etc, e.g. “erosion due to global warming”), and some students had no evaluative angle (e.g. simply “data science in the last ten years”, rather than “the challenges arising from data science” or “changes to business practice caused by data science”.)

During the class, I decided to spend a bit of time using the textbook, reinforcing the importance of finding sources. This is a very common issue for the level – they have no previous experience of researching through the library system and often show resistance to doing so. After half an hour or so, I left the final 70 minutes of the class to talk to students individually. I gave them printouts of course materials supplied for this week – the first sheet asked them to brainstorm questions for their tutor before the tutorial. The second sheet was for noting down action points arising from the tutorial.

Three students submitted no proposal at all and a further 3 students had proposals which required substantial changes to be accepted. The remainder of the class had proposals which were acceptable with varying levels of changes needed, mainly to the specifications of their topics and narrowing what they would evaluate. I began my tutorial chats with the students who had the most improvements to make. It became clear very soon that I simply did not have enough time to get through the whole class. It was also apparent that students were not keen on filling out the sheets, nor taking notes when I gave them feedback. I carried on ploughing through and, because the class was attached to lunchbreak, ended up running overtime by 20 minutes with the last few students.

I walked out the class in part pleased that I had talked at length to every student, but feeling that I really hadn’t succeeded in making the best use of the time. The students were mostly chatting when they weren’t having a tutorial and even though they had their own individual feedback, they hadn’t written much down.Was it a stretch too far to expect Foundation students to brainstorm questions for their tutor? They simply needed to be told what was good and what needed changing. The feedback definitely suffered from being oral while looking at the electronic submissions on screen with them. The permanent aspect of  printed feedback seemed far safer to ensure that they would understand what they needed to do.

I discussed the incident with a colleague and she had, in my view, a far better approach to the same class. Her method was to first go through common issues to the class, then give out sheets of individual feedback of one paragraph of action points to each student. She then put the students in groups to discuss their projects and action points and during this group discussion she went round class, spending a couple of minutes with each student to reinforce that they understood their feedback. She admitted that her class was a higher level and very good at independent learning (they were medical students with a higher level of English). However, it seemed a far better approach. I had one of those face-palm moments and thought: “Why didn’t I do it like that?”

Giving feedback on such a complex project is difficult and there is no substitute for detail. Feedback is essential as Race and Pickford (2007) state: “Designing assessment and giving students useful feedback on their learning are perhaps the most significant elements of the work of teachers in post-compulsory education”. I feel the situation was not helped by a lack of guidance from the syllabus and the printed materials supplied were not very effective, but let’s not apportion blame elsewhere. I chose to try to spend a lot of time with each student during class, while my colleague spent some extra time writing and printing individual feedback sheets before the class, which made the process during class far easier.

In conclusion, I learnt the following for future feedback sessions: firstly, it’s important to minimise repetition of feedback by presenting common themes to the class that apply to many students. Secondly, written feedback with action points for each individual is preferable to oral feedback, so that students have a clear, permanent record of what is required. Thirdly, expecting to fit 20 individual chats in a short period of time is both unrealistic and also a poor use of class time because the rest of the class tends to drift, simply waiting for their tutorial. It’s better to give key feedback to the whole class at the beginning and give them a task to improve their project while checking understanding.

My frustration at the problems in my session is at least tempered by the fact that I have a much clearer idea of how it can work better in future. Feedback for students is such a key part of this type of module, so getting it right goes a long way to maximising the effectiveness of my teaching.

Reference: Race, P. Pickford, R. (2007) Making teaching work: Teaching smart in post-compulsory education. Sage: first edition