Tag Archives: feedback

weeknotes

There may be mergers ahead – Weeknote #272 – 17th May 2024

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The news this week was dominated by the financial crisis that the university sector is facing in the UK.

Wonkhe said in their daily briefing

An increasing number of universities in England face a material risk of closure unless they significantly cut costs or merge. The Office for Students (OfS) 2024 financial sustainability report discusses a heavy reliance on international students due to declining domestic student fee income, and a “worst-case scenario” predicts that four out of five institutions will be in deficit by 2027 without changes.

With over optimistic views by universities about student numbers (domestic and international) the sector is facing a real financial challenge and with no real solutions in sight. There is no easy solution to this.

The OfS report was quite clear about the pressures facing the university sector.

Continuing decline in the real-terms value of income from UK undergraduates combined with inflationary and economic pressures on operating costs and the costs of developing buildings and facilities, as well as increasing employer contributions to some pension schemes.

They added the following key points in their report.

  • A recent apparent reduction in UK and international applications after years of strong growth, especially from international students.
  • A higher education financial model that has become reliant on fee income from international students, with a particular vulnerability where recruitment is predominantly from a single country.
  • The affordability of necessary estate maintenance and development and the significant cost of investment needed to reduce carbon emissions as part of providers’ commitments to achieve net zero.
  • Cost of living difficulties for students and staff, which challenge both student recruitment and the support needed by students during their time in higher education.

The report set out that universities may need to think differently to respond to the challenges they face.

Changes to a provider’s operating model can be a healthy response to financial challenge.  The sector as a whole has been in a relatively strong financial position for much of the past decade and has expanded its delivery to more UK and non-UK students. The financial challenges it is facing now could be a catalyst to drive positive change and innovation. Actions being taken by providers can result in more efficient operation, and could have benefits for students, including improved value for money.

This very much echoes the work I have been doing at Jisc on optimising operations and looking at collaboration and shared services.

The report also acknowledges that there may be mergers ahead.

We also expect that we might see some changes to the size and shape of the sector, for example, through mergers and acquisitions or increase specialisation.

As part of my work I wrote a vision about mergers and the formation of large university groups, but with the individual partners within that group retaining their local identity.

The first large university groups appeared following mergers forced by the regulator after financial pressures could have caused at least one higher education institution to fail. The new group recognised that though in theory they should have a new name, they also realised that the existing names were brands in their own right. As a result they formed The University Group™ but the individual university names were kept. Staff were employed by The University Group™ but students attended a named university. It was so successful that some smaller institutions asked to join the group but retain their identity. What was important to the group was that management and staff recognised that they were employed by The University Group™ and not the named university in which they worked (though some teaching staff worked across the group), from a student experience perspective the student was a student of the named university. They would be awarded their degree from that named university and would to all intents and purposes be a graduate of that named university.

This is a model we have seen in the Further Education sector, with large college groups and individual campuses having a separate brand and identity.

As well as facing financial challenges, the sector is also facing an unhappy cohort of students who are making more complaints.

Students complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) in England and Wales rose to 3,137 in 2023, the ombuds’ annual report reveals. This was a ten per cent increase from 2022, and OIA recommendations led to more than £580,000 paid out in financial compensation, in addition to almost £640,000 in settlements. Some 21 per cent of complaints were adjudged to be justified (two per cent) or partly justified (seven per cent) or were settled in favour of the student. 

Wonkhe reflects on a year of complaints received by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.

I was in the office for a couple of days this week, but reflected I’ve not been out and about for a while. I was expecting to go out and do some visits and workshops in May, but these never materialised. I‘ve also not attended any recent events, I think I might have to do some travelling over the next few weeks.

I attended our regular catch up meeting with the OfS this week in our Bristol office, and we updated each other which what is happening and what this may mean.

Wrote a short thought piece on academic staff using ChatGPT for student feedback.

We know that students are using tools such as ChatGPT to support their assessment work. It looks like some staff are also using the tool to provide feedback.

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I have started a leadership development programme at Jisc. I am very much in the position in my career, where it is much less about what do I need to do to advance my career, but more about having achieved my career aspiration, what can I do for Jisc. I have extensive management and leadership experience, running teams of various sizes, complexity and geographically distributed. I have planned, designed, and delivered shared services for consortia and complex organisations. I have managed multi-million pound budgets and projects.

So, I am not attending the programme to learn how to be a leader, but there is something about refreshing and updating your knowledge in this space. Also, it will be good to work with colleagues across the organisation as well.

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Please provide feedback

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We know that students are using tools such as ChatGPT to support their assessment work. It looks like some staff are also using the tool to provide feedback.

Saw this tweet on the Twitter.

In one of the student discords I am a member of – someone explaining they had to write to their tutor to explain that it was clear that their feedback was from ChatGPT because they’d cut and pasted the prompt as well

Not much of a surprise that staff are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT for writing feedback for students to save time. There is a deeper question on whether this is not just ethical, but also if using the tool is providing useful feedback to the student.

We don’t know what the prompt was, but I suspect that if the prompt was left in as it was copied and pasted onto the student work, then it probably hadn’t even been read before being pasted.

I can see the potential for using tools such as ChatGPT to maybe tidy up feedback, but not to replace the entire process of creating feedback.

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #27 Undertaking a Survey

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Many curriculum topics ask learners to gather and analyse data. Hospitality and Catering students may want to gather data about spending habits on eating out. Travel and Tourism students may want to gather information on the costs of tickets for attractions, opening times and discounts. Students on a Business Enterprise course may want to gather data on customer habits to help them formulate a business plan.

In addition to learners gathering data for a survey, teachers or other staff in the college may want to get data. We recently gathered information on how learners felt about the VLE and what needed to be done to make it better; we also gathered data on how they felt about tablets and their use in teaching and learning.

There are a fair few ways for learners and staff to gather data for a survey. You can of course collect responses in paper format, enter all the data and then undertake the analysis. Another option would be to use a Google Form and collect the data in that way.

Using the VLE, say for example, through the Feedback Module on Moodle, allows the learners to spread their survey across the complete college community. Once the survey is done there are some analytical tools included in the Feedback Module, or you can download all the data into an Excel file for further analysis. There is an element of consistency too, with learners using the same tool for the data collection and initial analysis.

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #76 Learner feedback

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Desks

So how was it for you?

These days if you go to any kind of coffee shop or restaurant, or buy something from a retailer on the high street, get an MOT or your tyres done, the waiter, retailer assistant or mechanic hands you a little card. The card usually offers you the chance to win an iPad, a £100 or something similar, with a web link (sometimes an QR Code) and asks you for feedback on what you’ve just done.

Now it is generally accepted that we should be asking our learners how the lesson they are in went. Asking questions such as “what went well?” and “even better if?” allow practitioners to evaluate the effectiveness of what the learners learnt, and how they learnt it.

There are many ways to do this, post it notes are an obvious one, that can then be stuck next to the door on the way out. We have practitioners using tools such as Wallwisher (now known as Padlet) for a similar virtual type activity.

As you really need to be asking for feedback at each lesson, it makes sense to have a variety of ways to collect and collate feedback. The VLE has a number of tools that can be used to collect this learner feedback.

As might be expected a tool like the Feedback block in module is designed to do just that collect and collate feedback. You can create a series of questions, or even a single question. The key is getting the learners to add their feedback and importantly for the practitioner to reflect on the feedback and ensure it feeds into their future planning.

If there is a quiz tool on the VLE then using an open-ended format quiz will work in a similar manner to the concept of a feedback module. Just make sure that it doesn’t mark the quiz and give the students a score!

Usually the data from quizzes and feedback style modules can be exported as a spreadsheet file for further analysis.

You could use a discussion forum, where this works well is if you want group feedback and for the learners to reflect and discuss their feedback, collaborating together to provide that feedback to the practitioner.

One advantage of the VLE for gathering feedback is that it is recorded and is also accessible in the future. Perfect for analysis feedback over a period of time.

I wouldn’t use the VLE every lesson for feedback, there are many ways of gathering learner feedback, however it is one tool that you can and should use.

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #79 Lesson feedback

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In the long and distant past, getting feedback on learners was something that just didn’t happen… the only real feedback that any practitioner got was through assessment. Though assessment is useful to get feedback on whether learners have learnt anything, it doesn’t help very much in getting feedback from learners if the process of learning is working. Would learners who get a C grade have got a B grade if the teaching had been more engaging? Would the learners who dropped out (failed) been a success if the teaching was more suited to their needs?

Getting feedback is important part of any learning process to ensure future success.

In the recent past, feedback has often been obtained through end of year or course surveys, or slightly better end of term surveys. Problem with any paper based survey is that someone has to crunch the results. That can take time, so you probably do it rarely.

A VLE can be used quite easily to host a feedback survey. Many feedback tools can be replicated so that they can be copied (or refreshed) for each lesson. This means it can not only be easy to setup, but quick and easy to copy for each lesson.

The feedback can be on how the learners felt about the lesson or what they learnt. This can then be used by the practitioner to improve future lessons or to change activities and assessments. Aggregated feedback from all the lessons and across the curriculum area can also be used to feed into any self-assessment process.

Moodle has a Feedback module that allows a series of questions to be posed to learners. This will collate the responses that can then be exported to Excel if required. Another module on Moodle that can be used is EasyVoter for a more immediate response in the lesson itself. Though of course all the learners need to have a computer to take advantage of this feature. The advantage of the Feedback module is that it can be done later at home, in the Library, or in a coffee shop.

There are other uses for EasyVoter, Feedback or other similar tools within the VLE, but lesson feedback is a useful way of using the VLE to improve the quality of the learner experience.

100 ways, assessment, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #8 Assessment Feedback

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In a previous entry in this series I wrote about how the VLE can be used for assignment submission and setting an assessment.

You can of course use the VLE to provide feedback on those submitted assignments or assessments.

Feedback is important to learners, it allows them to reflect on their work, to improve the current future work and improve their potential to finish and succeed on the course, module or programme of study.

Traditionally feedback was written onto the handwritten scripts that the learner submitted.

We have moved along a little since then, it is now, as already mentioned, very easy to set an assessment on the VLE and for the learner to submit their work on the VLE. It closes the circle if the feedback on the assessment is also on the VLE.

Though some practitioners like to write on scripts, this can be challenging if the submitted work is electronic, I know you can say print it off, but what about if the submitted work is a poster, a website, a presentation, a video, an audio recording… quite challenging to write feedback on an audio recording!

It makes much more sense to place this feedback where the learner can access it. Of course feedback needn’t always be textual, and using audio, video or screencasted feedback means the ideal home for this feedback is on the VLE. It needn’t get lost in the pile of papers that most learners carry or in the hundreds of e-mails if it was e-mailed. Most institutional e-mails have a limit on the size of the mailbox and this can cause issues not just for the learner who receives the e-mail but also the practitioner who sends feedback (and they will send it to a whole class).

Remember they may need to access it more than once, especially if they have to resubmit for example. Feedback is not a one off process it can be useful for reflective learners to re-read feedback on not just their latest piece of work, but also past pieces of work so that they can enhance and improve future pieces of work; demonstrate that they do understand and can apply the substance of the course.

Feedback is important, it doesn’t have to be on or live on the VLE, but the VLE can be a useful place to deliver and store feedback on assessments for learners.

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