L8 3 6

=Students are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) to assist them in making effective use of staff feedback in their learning. =

Evidence
Students must gain information about how and what they understand and misunderstand. They need to know how they can obtain such feedback. Providing and receiving feedback requires much skill on the part of teachers and students.

Communication processes that promote learning, rather than technology, are the research focus of Visser and Visser (2005). In the first of two exploratory studies they identified three needs areas: cognitive communication and support; affective, motivational support; and communication strategies to ensure that students maintained involvement in the courses. The research demonstrated the need for more than traditional feedback and conventional encouragement and the quality of teacher communication and the content was found to be important. The second study explored communication issues more extensively and concluded that there were obvious and sometimes ‘critical’ communication shortcomings that fail to meet student expectations regarding ‘the quality of the interaction and the degree of comfort and motivation provided’ (p. 28). Suggestions are made to help address the shortcomings including: providing training and documentation; establishing student expectations and requirements; incorporating communication exercises in introductions to courses; ensuring communication media is used to interact meaningfully; use teaching approaches that are relevant and appropriate to e-learning; ensure that communication creates a shared experience, rather than shares an experience; use language to communicate collaboratively; use concrete elements to formatively assess quality/frequency of communication and students’ perceptions of these (pp. 28-9).

Merely giving feedback is not enough. Unless students are encouraged to use the feedback in appropriate ways its effect is greatly diminished (Rust 2002).

There are many potential problems with the operation of course communication systems, for example, unless students receive prompt feedback they feel they are posting to the network without response (Vrasidas & McIsaac 1999). Responsive and timely teacher-learner communications significantly effect positive learning experiences and outcomes (Blignault and Trollip, 2003; Bolliger and Martindale, 2004). Therefore all users of communication channels need to be aware of the intended use, conventions, and outcomes of each communication channel.

Resources
Milne & White (2005) collect together twenty-three sets of e-learning quality guidelines from an array of geographical regions. Such guidelines, or something like them, should be part of the support offered to staff by their organizations. Staff need guidelines, and examples of good practice.

Students need to understand the importance of feedback, and that the emotional and psychological investment in producing a piece of work has a much stronger effect than receipt of subsequent feedback. Hence students need to understand that feedback exercises and tasks need to be undertaken so that they are encouraged to actively engage with the feedback given (Rust 2002).

Self-marking exercises can be performed where students are encouraged to compare feedback to the work they are producing and align future performances with previous and ongoing feedback.

Research evidence suggests that simply giving feedback without requiring that students engage with it is likely to have only limited effects (Rust 2002). ‘We probably need to create feedback exercises that force students to actively engage with that feedback’ (p. 153).

It may be that only if we actually get students to redraft work according to feedback provided or take it further through other exercises that we will see real effects on performance (Rust 2002).