OUGD402 - Feedback is Essential

What is higher education?

definition of 'teach' - Show or explain to (someone) how to do something

however;

definition of 'educate' - meaning to extract knowledge

The idea that feedback IS teaching, and that the teacher helps to extract existing knowledge from the student is the manifesto of learning in the studio in higher education. 

(lectures, workshops and sometimes seminars does not work in this way)

With this is mind,

FEEDBACK IS ESSENTIAL

types of feedback: formative and summative 

• one to one sessions - verbal
• progress surgeries - verbal and written
• progress tutorials - written and verbal feedback
• studio based feedback - verbal and sometimes written critique
• concept crits/ progress crits/ final crits - verbal and written feedback

What a student can be critically analysed on:

• Use of blog - quality of content, tagging, organisation, quantity.
• Assessment criteria
• time & project management
• academic/ writing skills
• critical evaluation of oneself & others
• Quality of work/ design decisions
• Individual progression - where/ if I am improving?
• How appropriately one has responded to the brief

This list can be put into 3 categories:

1. My work
2. My documentation skills
3. My academic progression

In groups, we came up with a list of questions that we would like feedback on about our blogs, so that we may respond to the answers with improvement/ correction of our work:

1. Organisation of my blog - are things in the right place? Is it easy to navigate?
2. Are my blogs complete/ up to date?
3. Are my blogs visually engaging - we're on a Graphic Design course!
4. Are my blogs well written? - does it make sense?
5. Is the quality of writing degree standard? - am I using the dialogue of design?
6. Has the quality of my work improved?
7. How can I improve?
8. What are my strengths?
9. What are my weaknesses?
10. Are my posts labelled correctly? - and so easy to grade...

Lots of these questions seem to repeat the same sort of ideas and so we each chose 5 from the list, which we then were to post individually to our PPP blog:

1. Organisation of my blog - are things in the right place? Is it easy to navigate?
2. Are my blogs complete/ up to date?
3. Are my blogs well written? - does it make sense?
4. How can I improve?
5. What are my strengths?

The rest of the group would then respond to these questions in the comments section of the post with constructive feedback.