In todays offering, Dr. Kirsten Knox discusses issues around student confidence in engaging with math’s. It reflects on experience and conversations with colleagues in regards to issues that students face. Helena Paterson and Phil McAleer discuss the importance of formative feedback as an iterative and circular process. Enjoy, and here is a topically relevant tune to listen to..
A-sum-a-day keeps the anxiety away – Dr Kirsten Knox
It has long been commonly acknowledged that across Higher Education institutes, that many Life Science students struggle to perform the basic, functional maths required in their degrees. This is not complex maths but rather numerical analysis of data or simple lab calculations such as concentrations or dilutions – these types of calculations are introduced during Nat5 chemistry at High School, so well within the capabilities of undergraduates.
Low mathematical literacy amongst students not only impacts their grades but also potentially impacts self-esteem, progression and retention and even future employment options (Croft, Harrison & Robinson, 2009; Daker et al., 2021). Developing competency in numeracy is of course multi-factorial but evidence suggests that for many students, the inability to perform basic lab calculations is strongly influenced by a lack of confidence, rather than ability (Daker et al., 2021). This frequently manifests as an “I can’t do maths” mindset regardless of the simplicity of the calculation. Consequently some students avoid numeracy questions in exams and struggle in lab practicals requiring calculations.
Through conversations with colleagues and reflections on my own experiences of lab calculations, I realised that a lack of repeat practice was quite likely a significant but simple, part of the issues our students faced. I felt that the reason that everyone who has ever worked in a lab is confident and competent in these types of calculations is due to the frequency with which we perform them, making it second nature. This realisation sparked an idea – if students were asked to do one question a day, every day, they would remember how to perform these types of calculations more easily, in turn building confidence and become more willing to try new calculations.
To bring this idea to life, I assembled a team of students and staff on an LTDF funded project we called “A-sum-a-day keeps the anxiety away”. We co-created an online resource using Moodle quiz where students would complete one calculation a day, Monday to Friday across Semester 2. The question banks were organised by difficulty, with students starting with the most simple questions in the first week and then the challenge was increased week on week. Each attempt provided positively framed feedback and instructions on how to complete the calculation were given each time a student answered incorrectly. Further, as the questions were asked online, with no time pressure, students could feel comfortable to make errors in a no-risk environment with no fear of embarrassment. Students were also free to revisit earlier sections at any time and upon completion, they could use the entire resource as a revision tool.
We surveyed students about their confidence and abilities before and after completing Sum-a-day and there was a clear increase in both confidence and students’ assessments of their own abilities to complete these calculations. Feedback on the resource was resoundingly positive and students who completed it last semester have asked for it to be copied to their 3rd year Moodles so that they can continue to use it. We are now thinking about how the same structure could be applied to other types of common calculations, including statistics.
Daker, R.J., Gattas, S.U., Sokolowski, H.M. et al. First-year students’ math anxiety predicts STEM avoidance and underperformance throughout university, independently of math ability. npj Sci. Learn. 6, 17 (2021).
Parsons, S., Croft, T., Harrison, M. (2009) Does students’ confidence in their ability in mathematics matter?, Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA, Volume 28, 53–68
Feedback as data: learning from the comments we give our students – Helena M. Paterson and Phil McAleer
School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow
Feedback, and feedforward, on assignments is seen as one of the key components of student development, particularly in Higher Education, with a plethora of research and commentaries existing on engaging students with feedback. However, the feedback that we give students can also be a rich source of information and a valuable resource to the teacher. When we regard our feedback as data it can be analysed in a range of useful ways. Feedback to students can tell us what our students understood that year as well as what they struggled with; it helps us to monitor year-on-year patterns in student skills development; and it helps us engage in cyclical improvement of our course, assessment or curriculum to maximise student learning. Finally, it can help us optimise resources for providing feedback for future course iterations through identifying necessary improvements. In short, as educators, feedback is our data.
In the schematic below we demonstrate a common perspective about the role of feedback for student development where the teacher and student contribute to a feedback loop centred on the student skills and knowledge.
Schematic 1: A feedback loop centred on the development of student skills but in which the lecturer and course only provide information and do not gain from the process.
This common conception suggests that at the start of the year a lecturer writes their material and their assignment, they teach their course and set the students off on completing the assignment. The student then takes feedback from other work to help write and complete their assignment before submitting it to the lecturer. The lecturer then provides further feedback, and feedforward, for the student who then aims to incorporate that information into their practice when redrafting the current assignment or writing future assignments.
However, as only the student is within the perceived loop there is no expectation that the educator learns anything from the process. With this perspective, whilst the student will develop, assuming the feedback and feedforward is effective, the educator would ultimately teach the same course each year and be faced with giving the same comments and feedback to students year-on-year; a common stated point of frustration for educators.
The second schematic, below, offers a view that adds the educator back within the feedback loop so that they may mindfully learn from the process, alongside their students. We believe that many educators engage implicitly in this process of formulating a feedback loop for themselves but that a more explicit engagement would enhance the cyclical course improvement process.
Schematic 1: A feedback loop centred on both the development of student skills and on lecturer development through analysis of the feedback they provide their students.
To summarise, this schematic from the student perspective it is the same as above, but from the educator perspective it highlights a pathway for them to use their feedback to students to develop future iterations of their module. As part of the feedback process to students, educators should be looking for patterns, consistencies and regularities, both correct and incorrect, and reflecting on that as a means to understand what students learnt from the module. At one level, summarising this information during the feedback process can make effective general class feedback that can be combined with individual feedback to help give students a wider perspective; learning not just from what they do but from what others did as well. The next step, and the crucial aspect for future development as an educator, the teacher must then use that general feedback to help enhance and develop their module for the coming year, reflecting on what went well and what didn’t; perhaps even picking up on what is missing from their students’ knowledge and using that to build future support material.
To note, it would be foolhardy to assume that we could eradicate all misunderstandings in any academic class, regardless of how reflective we are as teachers. Likewise, it is misguided to assume that the students are at fault for repeating the same issues year-on-year; particularly when we are in fact the one consistency in the class. Instead, it is valuable to envisage expected mistakes as part of a necessary route towards expertise for any student. Building a clear reflective loop around the feedback we give our students, and incorporating it into our own development, will help reduce the time we spend on low level corrections of expected mistakes and increase the time we spend on building a deeper level understanding in our students, making it a more richer experience for us all.
In conclusion, to make the most use of feedback, in our view, it is important that the educator puts themselves back into the feedback loop. This idea is not new and indeed takes from the original concept of formative feedback as a means of both educator and student learning about students’ knowledge and skills. However, with competing demands, it has become harder for educators to capitalise on the rich pedagogical information available within the feedback they give. Ultimately, we suggest the feedback process needs to be viewed as an iterative and circular process, rather than a didactic process, with both staff and students learning from the data.
Lead editor: Edward Beggan
Editors: Louise Sheridan, Shaun Bremner-Hart & Colin Mack