Warning: this is going to be a bit of a grumble - and about students.

There is a great deal of angst about feedback to students on their performance. Student leaders and politicians call for more feedback, given more quickly, and aimed at improving student understanding and future performance.  I have argued that too often the way we mark scripts and essays is aimed at justifying the mark we award rather than helping students to improve.  We need to take the time to help students make effective use of feedback.  Against a fair bit of opposition, last summer I got a proposal through Senate that sets a series of standards for the provision of feedback to students.  I have been keen to improve my own offering of feedback in my teaching.

Last month 24 out of the 25 students in my final year class handed in projects of around 8-10 sides each. I dutifully marked them, paying great attention to making marginal comments that would explain issues where individuals had gone wrong or where alternative viewpoints might have been covered.  I wrote copiously on the cover sheets, adding an extra section to the standard headings labelled 'To improve' and on every essay (even that which I awarded a provisional mark of 84 to) I suggested how the student could have obtained a higher mark. I spent a long time on this marking task.

Ten days ago I spread the essays out on a table during my class and invited everyone to find their own (the anonymous numbers had not yet been decoded).  I suggested they might like to read through my marginal comments on the essays and gave them 10 minutes to do so, as well as to read the overall summary and the suggestions for improvement.  I also offered to see any student who wanted to discuss their essay and my comments, and indicated that I would particularly welcome the chance to talk to students whose marks had disappointed them. (Since there was at least one Third and some Lower Seconds I assumed some stduents would fall into that category).

The students descended on the table and found their own essays.  But within 2 minutes most had finished with them.  Several didn't even bother to take their essay out of its slip case - instead simply looking at the numerical mark and not even reading the comments I had laboured over to help them improve for the future, or my marginal comments which remained unseen by them.  I don't think that a single student used the opportunity to read through everything that I had written on their essay, either in the margin or on the cover sheet.

Since then one student has been to see me to talk about his essay - and we had a very good conversation that I hope was of help to him: he had a 58 and wants to lift his performance into the Upper Seconds. Two further students made appointments to see me today to go through their essays, but then failed to show up.

Yet I guess that when these students fill in the National Student Survey later this session many of them will say that they didn't get prompt feedback, that it wasn't detailed, and that it didn't assist their understanding.

Here's a hypothesis: When students answer questions about their satisfaction with feedback they read them as if they are about their satisfaction with their marks. If they get a mark they like they think it's good feedback: if they get a mark they are disappointed with they think it's poor feedback.  They are not principally interested in feedback at all, but in the mark they receive.  The trouble is, I'm not sure how to test my hypothesis.  But I'd be interested in other people's comments on the idea.