MyFeedback tool: changing how students engage with their feedback

Jess Gramp (UCL Digital Education) discusses how playing a key role in the development of a new Moodle tool, MyFeedback, led to her winning a Provost’s Teaching Award this year.

The Moodle MyFeedback report shows general written feedback from across Moodle, so students can identify patterns and better understand the assessment feedback they receive.

With the support of their Personal Tutors, they can determine how to improve academically. Module Tutors can also use the report to identify students who may need additional support.

Online submission and feedback makes it more timely and useful for students

As a Digital Education Advisor, I have observed how technology is enhancing the assessment feedback process in many departments. There has been a move to online submissions across UCL and more departments are also beginning to return feedback electronically. 

There are numerous benefits to this, including safe storage of assessments, faster return of feedback and better legibility.

By returning feedback faster to students, they can use this feedback to improve the quality of their next assessment. Online submission and return of feedback is also enabling departments to meet the UCL four week marking turnaround such as in the the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences.

MyFeedback tool was created so students could see feedback, as well as staff

The idea for developing MyFeedback initiated from a demonstration of the IoE’s Assessment Feedback reporting tool for staff by Tim Neumann.

Their tool showed Assessment feedback to teaching staff, but this was not visible to students.

Conversations I had with Professor John Mitchell and Dr Jason Davies helped to formulate a vision for a UCL version of this report. This informed my development of a prototype report in Moodle and a proposal for project funding to further develop the tool, with a focus on showing students their feedback and grades.

I have since contributed significantly to managing communication between end users and technical staff and ensuring the tool was fit for purpose, which was critical to its successful release. I am now working to help promote it more widely across UCL, in collaboration with my colleagues in the Digital Education team and Connected Curriculum working groups.

Bringing together feedback from across modules into one view in Moodle

Before MyFeedback, Moodle assessment grades and feedback were only available in each module’s course, meaning the information was difficult for students and staff to access. 

Assessment feedback that is now easily available on a single page includes:

• general comments
• links to further resources
• annotated feedback files
• rubrics and marking guides
• quiz results
• marks for offline work that has been uploaded into Moodle
• peer feedback from Moodle Workshops (more about Moodle Workshops in a case study)

MyFeedback enables all of these different types of feedback to be easily compared and downloaded.

Interaction with Turnitin

Since Turnitin Assignment feedback is stored in an external, commercial system, it cannot be displayed directly in the report, although it can be easily accessed via a direct link.

Some students have begun copying and pasting their own Turnitin feedback for comparison. Some students are also making use of the self-reflective notes feature, to plan how they will improve their grades in future assessments.

Already it is clear this tool is starting to change how students engage with their feedback. I am now looking at evaluating the use of MyFeedback to establish how this change is benefiting the student experience.