Assessing learning and exchanging feedback
Contextual Background
Due to constraints of time and large student numbers on BAGCD at CSM, we utilise peer feedback as a method of formative feedback. This has lots of exciting potential in terms of utilising the viewpoints of our diverse student demographic, but also has challenges such as meeting students’ expectations for tutor guidance, and providing meaningful and well-informed feedback that will help students progress.
Evaluation
Current strategies include small group discussions, audience testing of prototypes, using prompts/questions to guide feedback, anonymous feedback (both written notes and via Padlet), both of which avoid social barriers associated with verbal feedback. Group pin-up sessions allow the whole group to learn from seeing and hearing the feedback of others – useful if there are commonalities across student feedback. We have also equipped students with ‘tools for appraising’ typographic work through workshop activities and these seem to have greatly helped in equipping students with the knowledge and theories they can apply when giving feedback to others.
Moving Forwards
As Kate Brooks states in her essay ‘‘Could do Better?’: students’ critique of written feedback’, “Tutors need to become facilitators of the learning process rather than gatekeepers of knowledge, and students need more encouragement to reflect on their own learning journeys.” (Brooks, 2008).
Considering the purpose of feedback and how it can be useful to students in developing their work, we can use formative feedback as part of the design process, rather than at the point of hand-in, we can enable students to improve their work, make refinements and make informed decisions about their choices. This is particularly important in typography, where subtle refinements, can accumulatively make a big difference to the overall readability, aesthetics and effectiveness of their designs.
This past term I have brought in external partners from The Royal Mint as part of a 5-week industry focussed coin design project. One session was dedicated to industry feedback from the Head of Art Direction from the mint. Providing students with experienced technical and conceptual feedback, considering alternative stakeholders such as client and mainstream audience, which the students don’t always consider as they don’t regularly engage with these stakeholders in their projects.
There is an opportunity to employ role playing techniques in peer feedback sessions for our unit 3 sessions. The students are designing a book cover and inside pages for a paperback of short stories. My proposal is to ask them to choose a stakeholder: author, editor, publisher, marketing team, etc and assume this role in the critique session. With some prompts to consider, this will hopefully enable them to critique each other’s designs from a range of perspectives.
As Yu-Hui Ching found in her research into role playing at Boise State University, USA: “it was found that the role-play strategy alleviated cognitive challenges of peer feedback, made the activity more engaging, and relieved the affective barriers of providing peer feedback” (Ching, 2014, p.301)
Feedback should be to constructive and balance positive aspects (give students confidence to proceed) and highlight suggested improvements (and explain improvements should be seen as positive as they help students learn and improve). Feedback can help a student to learn but also give them confidence to proceed, providing what Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade refer to as: “those things that encourage, give comfort, approval and solace […] assists, articulates, champions, and endorses; for what stands behind, frames, presents, maintains, and strenghtens.” (Condorelli, Wade, 2009, p.6).
References
Brooks, K. (2008). ‘‘Could do better?’ Students’ critique of written feedback’. Networks, 5
Ching, Y.H. (2014). ‘Exploring the Impact of Role-Playing on Peer Feedback in an Online Case-Based Learning Activity’. International review of research in open and distance learning, 15(3). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1033051.pdf (accessed 15 March 2024)
Condorelli, C. & Wade, G (2009). Support Structures. London: Sternberg Press