TRANSCRIPT: DeakinDesign Principle: Feedback focused
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Dr Sagarika Mishra: I’m Sagarika Mishra. I’m a senior lecturer in finance and I teach secondary business finance united, they can.
The principle feedback focus means getting feedback from past and current students to improve the quality and delivery of the unit of for future students. I actually want to divide it into three parts and the first one is I’m going to talk about you know how feedback focused help the students in in my unit. And in that I would like to say that feedback focused approach in my unit helps student in essentially three ways. Feedback of past students who have done this unit, as part of the degree motivates my current students to do well in my unit, and secondly past students feedback helped me make changes in my unit that help student to be on top of things for my unit. And finally, students weekly reflection on their learning gives me timely feedback on the concepts that they have understood and those that they are struggling with. This allows me to revise my approach, whenever possible, to address where students are struggling.
How feedback from industry have to motivate the students? So students who have previously completed my unit, as part of their BCOM finance major and are now working in the industry can provide their feedback about what interested them in studying finance and what did they learn in the degree that help them in their career in finance. Further, they can also provide their thoughts on the future of the finance industry and advise current students how to make the most of their time by learning new skills as they’re doing their degree. I have actually gathered similar feedback from BCOM finance major alumni and I publish these feedback on my unit site as student success story every week, and this specifically motivates my current students to focus on my unit, since it is part of their finance major. And the third one, is how the feedback focused approach helped me to improve the unit, and to that I would say the evaluate feedback for the unit is not really about the content or my teaching approach, so it is hard for me to understand whether my teaching approach that I use and the content are understandable or intuitive for students, therefore, this trimester I’m encouraging students to reflect on their learning and I call this the student success journal. Every week I asked students four questions about their learning experience for that week and in the first few weeks itself I got a lot of insight into the concept that excited students and those that they appear to struggle with. These feedback encourages me to think about more innovative ways to teach the content, which will ultimately improve students learning experience in my unit.
So feedback focused approach always improves the quality of you know any product or process or activity, whatever you take. In the context of teaching, it is even more important because, as teachers, we get to discover new things with the student, which is very exciting. And another important aspect is that students feel very important because they think they’re there view matters and so so that’s so that’s why it is also important, therefore, I believe feedback focused approach will make Deakin a better place for students to study.
Yes, definitely you know, there are challenges, because I actually teach a big class and so that’s why you know. I was hoping, I am expecting that there should be more engagement, because you know I’m using new things new technique new approach every trimester so I’m hoping that you know students will be more excited and engaged with the unit, but, but you know so far I’m not that excited about you know the type of engagement, I have got in my unit. And, but you know I’m hoping for the best and I’m working towards it so to improve the engagement and I will keep on working on new new ideas and new innovation to get more engagement.
I think it is it all depends on the cohort they’re teaching meaning it if it is a large class, you know, then the approach would be you know different compared to if it is a smaller class, but in a smaller cohort actually it’s not that an issue because you know you can actually interact individually with students to get get you know to to it’s basically not that difficult when when you are using like you, when you are teaching a smaller cohort but for bigger cohort you know it can it can become a bit challenging and it also depends on you know the students perception right what they think about the unit, because there is always a view that okay this particular unit is hard for this one is easy so, so I think we have to manage student perception and, in my case I’m I feel that students think that this is a hard subject to that’s why I’m trying to do things you know which can help them and be on top of things and not think that this is, this is a hard hard unit so so yeah I think you know that are being feedback works well for every unit, but I believe that you know the approach can be a bit different you know from unit to unit, depending on the cohort size and student perception.