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VUF

Example 8

Actors: Lecturer
Type: Training practical skills/portfolio 

Dorthe Hansen,
Assistant professor
Department of Language and Communication
Faculty of Humanities, SDU


The feedback activity in brief
Individual feedback from the teacher on assignments that are part of a portfolio and train the students’ skills in teaching user interaction.

Application
The activity was employed in the second semester course User interaction at the Master of Science in Engineering – Welfare Technology programme at the Faculty of Engineering. This course is divided into four elements, where Dorthe Hansen employed the feedback activity in her element “Psychology”. The students were to translate the educational materials into something that could be used by means of cases on potential users of welfare technologies. The class had 10-12 students and they could choose to do the assignments independently or two-and-two. Most of the student chose to do the assignments independently.

The actual activity and its extent
The students received training in skills relating to psychology and user interaction by watching films about potential users and read materials about development of welfare technologies. Based on these materials the students had to write two assignments that had be approved for their portfolios. The portfolio is part of the final assessment and must be approved by the teachers. Dorthe chose to give oral feedback to the students. At first she gave the students a general feedback in class, and after that she gave individual feedback to each student. As the students had to do 8 assignments during the semester, 14 days were allocated to each of the two assignments in psychology, and the feedback was given in the week after the students had handed in the assignments.

It was possible to give individual feedback to each student due to the small number of students. Some of the time for teaching was used for giving feedback. Dorthe spent approximately 15 minutes on each student, and if the students needed additional feedback later on, they would get a short written message with new suggestions.

Thus, the feedback was offline but could be supplemented with e-mails. The feedback was given in one room while the rest of the students worked on their assignments in another room. The portfolio was a physical briefcase, which the students brought with them to the exam.

Experiences and assessment
The students were very happy about receiving feedback, and the activity generally worked very well.

Evaluation: in which contexts will you recommend this feedback activity?

Suitable for classes of: 10-12 students, maybe more
Suitable for level: - 
Suitable for offline, online or both: This feedback was given face-to-face but this could also be done via a conference system such as Skype or Adobe Connect
Other possible actors:  -
Is the activity part of an assessment method? The feedback is not part of the exam, but the portfolio is and it must be approved by the teachers before the exam
Is the activity part of the curriculum? The portfolio is part of the curriculum and the students can seek supervision with the teachers. However the oral feedback is not part of the curriculum
References: No

 

For more information about VUF please contact:
SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning - Rie Troelsen - riet@sdu.dk

For more information about this feedback activity please contact: 
Dorthe Hansen - dorthehansen@sdu.dk


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