WAI Inspired Wednesdays: Enabling the uptake of feedback  (CTE7010)

Audience: Course Instructors
Location: Online

Host: Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE)

Description

Pre-pandemic, CTE offered the annual Waterloo Assessment Institute (WAI) focusing on the assignment as a means of assessing student learning. Through peer feedback and guided work time over a two-day intensive retreat, WAI helped individuals and program teams redesign key assignments in their courses. Whether you were an individual seeking to improve an assignment, or a team seeking to link an assignment or assignments "horizontally" (across courses in a term) or "vertically" (across courses in different terms or years), the WAI provided space, time, expertise, and peer feedback. We do plan to offer this again in the future when we can come together face-to-face.

For Spring 2022, we are offering instead two shorter, modified, online experiences retaining key elements of the WAI, each session focusing on one of two themes

You can choose one or both based on your own intentions for your assignment(s). By the end of each session, participants will leave with a draft redesigned assignment based on feedback from peers and teaching and learning consultants. 

Format of the sessions

After you register for a session, you’ll be asked to fill out a pre-session worksheet to help facilitators best support you, and help you make the best use of your time with us.  If you sign up for both sessions, you’ll be asked to fill out a worksheet for each session for which you’ve registered. 

Each session will begin with a 30-minute introduction to the theme to help us begin our work. The duration of the session will be a combination of small group work and facilitated work time designed to help you begin your work, gather feedback, and continue your work after the session. 

Please choose one (or both) of the following sessions: 

WAI Inspired Wednesdays: Enabling Uptake of Feedback (CTE7010)
Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Feedback (during and after assessment activities) is a critical element of the learning process. Without feedback, students have incomplete or restricted ability to improve future performance and evaluate their progress. Yet, students often find feedback “difficult to understand, ambiguous or unusable (Henderson & Phillips, 2015; Orrell, 2006; Walker, 2009)… and [instructors] feel their feedback efforts are wasted (Bailey & Garner, 2010; Crisp, 2007; Orsmond & Merry, 2011)” (Henderson et al., 2018,p 1).

In this session, we’ll look at ways that we can design assignments and assessments so that feedback moves beyond something that is “done-to” learners to something that requires students to act upon, or to make some type of change (Boud & Molloy, 2013; Carless et al., 2011; Hattie, 2009; Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014). In this way, we begin to close the assessment loop, and help students become self-regulated learners.

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WAI Inspired Wednesdays: Redesigning Assignments from a Remote Offering to a Flipped Course

For those who attended the ‘From Remote to Flipped Course Redesign’ workshop, this session is for you!

During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to work or continue working on an assignment that you’d created for a remote offering and would like to redesign for a flipped course. Using the concepts covered in the ‘From Remote to Flipped Course Redesign’, you’ll begin working on an assignment or activity that you’d like to redesign for use in a flipped course, maintaining elements that were effective in the remote offering, and/or reclaiming what you’ve found effective and engaging in the in-person course environment. You may bring a new assignment or work on one that you feels needs some additional iteration after your first flipped offering.

Registration

Registration required (if this is your first time using GoSignMeUp, you will need to set up your account first). If you have changed roles at the University (e.g., graduate student to faculty) please updateyour "Participant Profile" in your GoSignMeUp account.

Cancellations

Many of our workshops have waiting lists, so if you've registered but can't attend, please cancel your registration well in advance through the registration system, so that someone else can fill your spot.

Accessibility

The University of Waterloo is committed to achieving barrier-free accessibility for persons with disabilities who are visiting, studying, or working at Waterloo. CTE’s online workshops are delivered through either WebEx, Microsoft Teams, or Bongo with the audio component available either as captioning or a transcript. CTE’s face-to-face workshops typically involve a mix of presentation and discussion-based activities, and we encourage a scent-free environment. We welcome accompanying assistants, interpreters, and note-takers. If you have questions concerning access, such as parking, building layouts, or obtaining workshop content in alternative formats, or wish to request accommodations for our programming, please let us know by emailing cte@uwaterloo.ca. Please note that some accommodations may require time to arrange.