Conditions that enable effective feedback

ABSTRACT

Despite an increasing focus on assessment feedback, educators continue to find that simply replicating an effective feedback practice from one context does not guarantee success in the next. There is a growing recognition that the contextual factors surrounding successful practices need to be considered. This article reports on a large-scale mixed methods project and proposes 12 conditions that enable successful feedback in higher education. The conditions were distilled from seven rich case studies through multiple stages of thematic analysis, case comparison and reliability checking. The conditions were also evaluated by surveying senior leaders of Australian universities. These conditions highlight the importance of carefully designing feedback processes, along with the need for addressing capacity and culture for feedback. This helps to explain why there are such variances in effective feedback across contexts, and offers insight into how it may be achieved.     

Facilitating Learning Events Through Example Generation

This study deals with the initial understanding that advanced undergraduate mathematics students exhibit when presented with a new concept in an environment requiring self-generation and self-validation of instances of the concept. Data were collected in spring of 1995 through interviews with 11 third and fourth year undergraduate mathematics students. We discuss the data from the perspective of the student's concept image and introduce the notion of learning event to indicate when a student communicates and applies a new understanding of a concept. We infer that the students in our study who employed an example generation learning strategy were more effective in attaining an initial understanding of the new concept than those who primarily employed other learning strategies such as definition reformulation or memorization.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Subject index

Subject Index

Subject index     

A cognitive model for the evaluation of units of instruction

Instructional Science - This paper describes an approach to the problem of how particular pre-existing systems of cognitive structures in individuals could be brought to bear on the design and...     

Text density level as a design variable in instructional displays

Presenting narrative text in computer-based instruction (CBI) is more difficult than in print lessons due to limited screen resolution and display area. The present research aimed at achieving a more compatible match between lesson content and the attributes of the presentation media. Subjects received either a print or CBI statistics lesson containing low-density (concise) narrative text, high-density (conventional) text, or the density type they preferred (learner-control). Results showed the low-density lesson to reduce completion time relative to the high-density version, while yielding equivalent achievement. Subjects receiving the lesson in the print mode had shorter completion times and higher achievement than their CBI counterparts. Attitude results showed that CBI was favorably regarded, but perceived as longer and slow-moving than print. Implications of results for designing instructional material in accord with CBI attributes and learner characteristics are discussed.     

Embedded Field Test Item Statistics: Can They Be Trusted for Estimating Student Proficiency?

Assessment items are commonly field tested prior to operational use to observe statistical item properties such as difficulty. Item parameter estimates from field testing may be used to assign scores via pre-equating or computer adaptive designs. This study examined differences between item difficulty estimates based on field test and operational data and the relationship of such differences to item position changes and student proficiency estimates. Item position effects were observed for 20 assessments, with items in later positions tending to be more difficult. Moreover, field test estimates of item difficulty were biased slightly upward, which may indicate examinee knowledge of which items were being field tested. Nevertheless, errors in field test item difficulty estimates had negligible impacts on student proficiency estimates for most assessments. Caution is still warranted when using field test statistics for scoring, and testing programs should conduct investigations to determine whether the effects on scoring are inconsequential.     

‘Keeping up with the time’: rebranding education and class formation in globalising India

This paper investigates the emergence of ‘internationalised’ schools as a form of middle-class aspiration in Kochi, India. It complements recent literature on the growth of international schools catering for host country elites, and shows how private schools are actively engaged in extending the aspiration for internationalised education among the city’s middle classes. The article shows how internationalised schooling has penetrated beyond Indian metropoles into secondary cities. It provides a detailed ethnographic account of how a private school has rebranded itself as an ‘internationalised’ school, involving the introduction of new practices and the repackaging of the school’s old nationalist project.