Even the highest-quality feedback on students’ work will not have an impact on their development unless students actively engage with and implement the advice. The literature, alongside anecdotal reports of educators, often paint a negative picture of students’ willingness to read and enact feedback. My recent programme of research has focused on students’ cognitive, motivational, and emotional landscapes and how they influence the ways in which students receive, process, and implement feedback on their work. In this keynote, I will argue that maximising students’ engagement with feedback is fundamentally an issue of design, where opportunities for students to develop the skills required for effective use of feedback, and opportunities to apply feedback, can transform the role of students in assessment. The responsibility for ensuring that feedback has high impact can, and should, be shared between educators and students.
Dr Naomi Winstone is a cognitive psychologist specialising in learning behaviour and engagement with education. Naomi’s research focuses on the processing and implementation of feedback, educational transitions, and educational identities. Naomi has extensive experience of academic leadership, having held the positions of Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey, and Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey. She also runs CPD events and workshops at Universities, Schools and Colleges across Europe, to support educators and students to enhance the impact of assessment and feedback on learning and development. Naomi is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a National Teaching Fellow.
An engaged mind is the most powerful learning tool in existence. Studies on the flow state, for instance, reveal just how motivating and impactful a focused state is for deep, long-lasting learning. But how can we engage the minds of our learners, and is an engaged heart just as important? One route to answers lies in Transformative Learning (TL). Whether working from theoretical bases laid down by Mezirow, Freire, Kegan, or Dirkx, TL-based instructional practice engages students in ways far beyond mere content delivery. To date, though, operationalizing TL at the program or institutional level has been challenging. The University of Central Oklahoma's (UCO's) development of the Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR), however, has proven successful in accomplishing all-institution, curricular and co-curricular, evidence-based TL that also produces compelling retention gains. With STLR now moving into its fifth year at UCO, and with other institutions in the U.S. and globally adopting/adapting STLR successfully, the benefits for students and institutions are clear. Dr. King will sketch a brief foundation about TL's place as an engagement pedagogy and then will serve up key ingredients in STLR's secret sauce.
Jeff King, EdD, is Executive Director of the University of Central Oklahoma’s Center for Excellence in Transformative Teaching and Learning (CETTL). His research and application interests have long focused on use of engaging educational strategies and activities, on how faculty can help students learn and be motivated toward deep learning processes, and on the ways faculty and institutions can help students persist in their educations. This interest has found its way into his work at CETTL and as project director for UCO’s Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR) initiative, a process that develops students’ employability skills while raising persistence. Over the years as a college faculty member and in faculty professional development, Jeff has been able to match passion to position in helping faculty and students succeed.