The impact of feedback in higher education: CRADLE & DER International Symposium 2018
28 August 2018
CRADLE are pleased to announce our third annual International Symposium will take place from September 3-5 in the Tuscan city of Prato. This year’s symposium is co-hosted with Monash University’s Digital Education Research (DER) group, and brings together leading national and international assessment feedback researchers.
Taking place over two and a half days at the Monash University Prato Centre, the symposium will feature presentations and discussion from leading assessment feedback researchers from around the world. The symposium is aligned with a book contract with Palgrave Macmillan, titled The Impact of Feedback in Higher Education: Improving Assessment Outcomes for Learners and edited by Michael Henderson, Rola Ajjawi, David Boud and Elizabeth Molloy.
Feedback is critical for effectively promoting learning. Without feedback, learners are limited in how they can make judgements as to their progress, and how they can change their future performance. Feedback is the lynchpin to learners’ effective decision-making, and the basis of improved learning outcomes. The value of feedback is tied with its assumed connection to an improved future condition – in other words, impact. However, while there is a growing body of research regarding feedback design – such as the potential of diverse sources (e.g., peers, automated systems), modes (e.g., written, audio, video, rubrics), agency (e.g., learners seeking specific feedback), sequencing, influence of context, and the development of evaluative judgement – there has not been a similar focus on the impact of feedback.
The 2018 International Symposium seeks to better understand how we might conceptualise, design for, evaluate and research the impact of feedback over time and across diverse contexts. With this in mind, we operationally define feedback as processes in which learners make sense of information about their work in order to improve learning strategies and future performance. As a consequence, we argue that it is important to understand how, when and why feedback processes result in various forms of effect, and how those effects may then influence future performance.
CRADLE and DER are excited to be bringing together leaders in the field to discuss, debate and critique notions of impact and feedback in higher education and pleased to be co-hosting the event in Prato. Stay tuned for latest developments from this event.
For the latest news and discussions from the symposium, be sure to follow the CRADLE team on Twitter:
@CRADLEdeakin
@r_ajjawi
@margaret_bea
@phillipdawson
@DrJoannaT
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