Element 12: Rubrics and feedback

What is this element about?

This element focuses on assessment tasks and the importance of feedback to support student learning and success. It is important that assessment criteria are clearly defined and that students are provided with feedback that is informative, timely and in a suitable format.

Why is it important?

Feedback is an integral aspect of the learning process. It provides opportunity for progression of learning to become visible to the learner. However, the value of feedback is easily missed if the learner does not have timely access to it, is able to identify that the information is in fact feedback, knows how to interpret the feedback and then respond in a meaningful way to it to progress learning.

It may be clear to you as a marker/unit coordinator that feedback is provided, but students may need some guidance in terms of understanding the feedback processes within a unit.

Feedback to student assessment is an important part of learning, as it helps justify to them how you arrived at their mark/grade. It also helps you to identify and reward specific qualities in their work, and to make recommendation for improvement. It helps students discern what you think is important in the course. Ideally, feedback should:

• guide a student to adapt and adjust their learning behaviour
• guide staff to vary their teaching to accommodate different learning needs
• focus around course and program learning outcomes
• help guide a student to become an independent and self-reflective learner
• provide enough detail to allow them to self-assess their work prior to formal assessment
• acknowledge the developmental nature of learning. (Baume, 2008) (Adapted from ACODE, 2017, p.6)

Feedback can be formal (via assessment grade) or informal (via forum Q&A), or non-assessed checks on learning (discussions or quizzes).

Rubrics provide a means of providing feedback in a consistent way and can be supplemented with additional marker comments if required. Rubrics can also be used to enable students to self-assess, particularly if they are actively used as part of the teaching process. In this capacity rubrics can act as feed forward mechanisms. As part of this sense making process opportunities for feedback can be enhanced by utilising opportunities for dialogue and creating shared understandings of unit and learning expectations.

The provision of feedback is not sufficient on its own to support shifts in student learning. Interpreting and responding to feedback requires taking action to promote change. Consideration should be given as to how a learner is expected or encouraged to respond to close the feedback loop and how this expectation is communicated to them.

A significant challenge emanates from generally limited student engagement with feedback (Winstone et al. 2017). A related barrier is modest student feedback literacy: the capacities and dispositions to make use of feedback productively (Carless and Boud 2018). For students to engage actively with feedback, they need agency in line with social constructivist approaches to learning (Rust, O’Donovan and Price 2005). Social constructivist feedback research and practice takes the perspective that shared and individual interpretations are developed through dialogue, sense-making and co-construction (Price, Handley and Millar 2011). Feedback predominantly in the form of teacher transmission of information to students is insufficient to promote complex learning (Sadler 2010). (Carless, 2019, p.5)

This element relates to the following research and practice informed guidelines/ frameworks:

TELAS Guidelines

• STANDARD 5: Learning and assessment tasks engage learners through planned learning experiences and feedback.

UNE Learning Standards

• 3. Demonstrate relevance and alignment:Our learning experiences are designed to have a clear purpose and relevance achieved by aligning content, learning activities, feedback and assessment with learning outcomes. Our students are provided with opportunities to link what they learn to their own experiences, the workplace and the wider world.

UNE Course Design Framework

• 4.3 Use assessment strategies which maximise student learning.
  Assessment will be designed purposefully to maximise student learning, embedding Work Integrated Learning, authentic assessment, assessment for learning and flexibility of assessment reflective of student cohorts. Students will have the opportunity to complete formative assessment tasks prior to Census Day. Assessment should be adequately scaffolded to, where possible, avoid large high stakes assessment tasks, and clear instructions should be provided to help maximise student success. Assessment rubrics which clearly articulate the assessment criteria are provided.

UNE Assessment Policy

What can I do?

Some things you can do include:

• Provide students with clear signposts that feedback is being provided, how, when, and where.
• Provide feedback in text, audio or in person as appropriate.
• Ensure feedback is timely so that students have a clear means of utilising the feedback to inform learning within a unit.
• Use rubrics that are clear, succinct and show the learner progression across grading performance descriptors.
• Ensure rubric criteria align with the assessment descriptor
• Where possible use digital rubrics within Turnitin or Moodle.
• Review and use rubrics together with students as part of the learning process – encouraging self-assessment opportunities.
• Ensure students can access rubrics prior to assessment submission.
• Provide opportunity for students to co-create rubrics or apply rubrics to exemplar assessments where appropriate to enhance understanding of expectations.
• Utilise opportunities for generic feedback on observation/noticing on learning, especially when it is not possible to give individual feedback in a timely manner.
• Give clear instruction as to action required by the student in response to feedback.
• Provide opportunity to discuss feedback with students – either at a group level or individually.
• Ensure terminology used in assessment tasks and documentation is consistent
• Ensure assessment tasks align with unit learning outcomes (see Element 11 for more information on assessment).

Hints and tips

Using Rubrics Digital Education @ UNE Blog

Rubrics: Why and howWebinar Slides Rubrics Why And How

Help and Support

Teaching Online @ UNE contains information on design, development and application of rubrics.

Contact the Learning Design team for specific unit related guidance and advice: learningdesign@une.edu.au

Supporting resources

ACODE. (2017). Threshold standards for online. Retrieved from https://www.acode.edu.au/pluginfile.php/1530/mod_resource/content/1/ACODE_TSFOLE_draft_1.2.pdf

Carless, D. (2019). Feedback loops and the longer-term: Towards feedback spirals. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(5), 705–714. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1531108

TELAS Framework https://www.telas.edu.au/framework/

UNE Online Learning Standards: https://myune.sharepoint.com/sites/academic-transformation/SitePages/Principals-for-Designing-Learning-Experiences-Online.aspx