Chris Deneen, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education Curriculum & Assessment  from MCSHE, and Bronwyn Disseldorp , Senior Learning & Teaching Consultant at Learning Environments together presented an engrossing talk in an online seminar for UoM teaching staff at the end of July, about effective feedback to students in online environments. (This is a belated post that serves to re-fresh my thoughts and virtual ‘take-homes’). Kicking off the session (and thoughtfully “doing things in 3s”, Chris let us in to the latest research about what constitutes effective…and fabulous….feedback. FEEDBACK THAT MATTERS. The gap between feedback and feedforward is what you are needing to address,this is where the ‘difference’ is made for the student to improve. (What is the current level of performance, where do you want the student to get to, and what will it take to get to the future performance? )

Some of my big takeaways from this illuminating session were…

on Rubrics – (sorry for the pun, but I loved learning the etymology of rubrics, coming from the red ink with which early illuminated manuscripts were marked for emphasis, the art historian in me got fired up….)

Feedback must be immediate (makes sense, but needs to be said)

Feedback must be dialogic – it must inspire and constitute a discussion between teacher/facilitator of learning, and student/learner

Feedback must not be debilitating (overwhelmingly time consuming/overcommitted) for the teacher/learning facilitator who initiates/delivers it

and

In feedback sometimes less is more

TO GET TO THE TECHNOLOGY PART OF IT…

Chris used a great cartoon for the leveraging of technology in feedback, ocean swimmer to deep diver….from technology being an enhancement, to the deeper situation where technology leads to transformation…

Bronwyn Dissledorp then took us on a romp through CANVAS and the affordances of the platform for innovative feedback. She talked about many things, including …

…the use of Speedgrader program in canvas; Canvas Quizzes – feedback options. Text can be displayed for correct and incorrect answers, and as overall feedback…facilitating more subtle responses: not just ‘right’ ‘wrong’….but why? You could have response data views, to show trends in answers, so you can see where there are most misunderstandings… Use of Gradescope, Feedback Fruits (Peer Review Assignment and Group Member Evaluation)…. Use of video in Peer Feedback – Student Presentations, feeding forward suggestions in formats that aren’t just words (ie video, or audio recordings), use of Poll Everywhere (turns into Wordle-like outputs that can be shared) and Qualtrics for getting feeback from students to inform the subject itself…

OK, I admit, at this point of the session I started feeling overwhelmed (mostly because I’m unfamiliar with a lot of areas in Canvas, as I haven’t created a subject to date, just participated in parts of one as a ‘guest’. )

A big takeaway was that the LE team can support the development of innovative uses of Canvas, building/tweaking platforms that suit the specific feedback requirements. We’ve been invited into a Feedback Canvas site to play, so putting this in practice will be the best way to learn. Also there is potential to get a Teaching and Learning grant to focus on Feedback, which would support doing this more deeply in the near future.

I’m thinking about this in the context of our Creative subject for Medical Humanities, and the final task being a creative output. Feedback will be crucial, and we’ve already thought of providing discussion sessions at the end of every synchronous session where students can share their creative process to date, and support each other (and we support them) in applying the modes of creativity we explore (dance, visual art, creative writing, music, etc) to their own creative journey through the subject. I’m thinking about a few factors will will define effective feedback in this virtual learning context: how the students are already in an unfamiliar space of being invited to be as creative as possible with the task, to engage in lateral thinking and inviting multidisciplinary perspectives…so there are a lot of ‘unknowns for them’. This is where the formative feedback is crucial, needing to be super clear, very supportive and nurturing of some risk taking, timely and frequent.

One idea that was discussed in the session that I think would be really useful is use of video recordings: a general one which can be delivered to everyone, where we (academic subject leads) talk about the assigment, discuss the rubric elements, what ‘success’ looks like in this context, and also share some content -including examples (such as the Artodontia site which is part of UBC websites of health-sciences students’ art) to give clear examples of what creative final-products can look like. We take the best of the ‘art crit’ concept sessions familiar to anyone who has studied visual arts, in the virtual synchronous classes.

As we continue to evolve and develop the Medical Humanities subject, I am excited to keep probing at areas like effective feedback, incorporating my own learning into the process…

This webinar is fascinating, and on a topic close to my heart. I feel creativity is the pot of gold at the end of the University Museum & Collections academic engagement rainbow…. By that, I mean that I think creativity is one of the ‘superpowers’ of this resource, or rather that it is a ‘disposition’ at the core of the Museums & Collections (encompassing the environments, collections, exhibitions, programs, and the staff and collaborators who activitate them).

The talk features 4 academics from across the world who have identified creativity as fundamental, and who talk about various facets of how we can promote creativity in higher education, in both learning and research contexts. Speakers are: Bashir Makhoul, president and vice-chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts in London; Giovanni Moneta, senior lecturer in psychology at London Metropolitan University; Linda Watts, professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell; and Yong Zhao, foundation distinguished professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas and a professor in educational leadership at the University of Melbourne’s own Graduate School of Education.

Situating creativity as desirable and fundamental across all disciplines, the panel noted the urgency for tertiary education leaders to communicate the value of creativity to policy makers and society, in an era when the split between STEM and humanities may be widening, and where creativity seems to be pushed to the sidelines. One of the shared perceptions from the panel was the need for students to be co-creators in their learning, or in the words of Yong Zhao, ‘students should be the partners of change, and owners of their own learning’.

The discussion begin from a definition of creativity, as the process of applying our imagination… It can’t be taught, but can be nourished. Creativity is a ‘high impact practice’, associated with higher order thinking skills… and so it is also a bit elusive. Conditions must be set up in tertiary contexts to allow creativity to flourish, and those conditions arise through a personalised learning experience, where individuals can best be allowed to work with their abilities, imaginations, and passion to develop their creative selves. Creativity creates a contexts in which you ‘surprise yourself’.

The panelists made many great points, provocations, and ‘calls to arms’. Here are some of my favourite (paraphrased/quoted closely from my notetaking during the panel discussion):

Linda Watts, in response to the prompt Creativity provides a bridge between the arts and sciences: “we are speaking to a tension that exists in universities between being organisations that persist within tradition, affirming existing knowledge; on the other hand there is the raw generative energy [through creativity] that transforms our lives in ways that are NOT customary or conventional” and goes on to quote Zora Neale Hurston from her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Dirt Road, ‘Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.’

Yong Zhao, in response to the prompt How do university leaders foster a creative culture across campus/the institution?: The 1st thing is for university leaders to recognise they are not preparing a workforce but rather preparing individual talents. Each student is a talented individual who can be creative. The 2nd thing is to create centres/institutes for students who may not fit very well in their disciplines/courses to have a place to go; creativity must be combined with knowledge and discipline, and to do this within a community. This allows them to be globally connected, using their creativity.

Bashir Makhoul, in reponse to the same prompt: Creativity is required for every researcher, everyone who is doing something, no matter what discipline they come from. Research is where we begin… There is an assumption that research is about data collection\, but that process itself, and connectivity between those elements of research, requires a creative mindset for it to work in terms of discovery. …You have to always think outside the box…You have to take intellectual risks on our own expense to reach that sense of discovery.

Yong Zhao in response to the prompt: Why is creativity so highly valued by employers? Indentifying the connection between the rise of creativity has a lot to do with the loss of human jobs, as technological innovations have made so many jobs redundant… this trend is moving towards the jobs requiring intellectual labour, as we see around the growth of AI innovations in the workplace. People instead need to be entrepreneurs, working in a space of uncertainty. In this domain, we need people who are actively seeking and prying, trying to figure out what to do, so they aren’t competing with same jobs as machines.

Linda Watts responding to the prompt: How can we ward off the risk of technology homogenising, rather than encouraging creativity. Is it harder across a screen?: Learning is a relationship; relationship can exist f2f or digital, and while each has its difficulties, it is the work of our lives that we persist in… Creativity is an important part of that: more than transmitting content or training skills, when we are learning and when we are teaching others we are involved in developing capacities and dispositions that the world needs, now more than ever.  Those with the ability to manage in a context of ambiguity, ambivalence, rapid change, skills like resilience and empathy, ability to deal with unstructured problems, bring ethical discernment to problems that are unresolvable, and conduct reflective practice. Whatever that means in the context of your content areas, there is room to think about the ways that learning is building a sensibility and not just a knowledge base.

Yong Zhao in response to the question: Do you think creativity is best encouraged or fostered when people are working as prat of a wider group or community, or is it an individual pursuit?: Both. However, creativity can be further supported if you are with a more creative group (example of Silicon Valley context)…If you have a creative culture on campus, your school/university is going to be more creative… Creativity needs to be combined with discipline.

The panel talk is supported by a group of additional resources, here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/spotlight/creativity-higher-education