This year, all 1000-level units at the University are introducing an Early Feedback Task (EFT) as part of the new Support for Students Policy (2023). In 2025 EFTs will be implemented in all 1000-level and 2000-level units across the University. In Semester 1, 2024, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) responded very positively to the introduction of EFTs. In a survey of over 600 FASS students, 71% reported that they found the EFTs useful in helping to self-assess their capacity to succeed in their units.
If you plan to implement an EFT in your unit, you might be wondering: how can I do this well for my discipline and context? And what are my colleagues already trying? This article showcases the EFT design experiences of three FASS coordinators in Semester 1, 2024.
Scaffolding engagement with exemplars
ARHT1001, Mark De Vitis
Mark wanted to engage students in an activity that would help them to begin to develop the discipline-specific skills that they needed to succeed in ARHT1001. By week 3 students had already been investigating art objects in lectures and tutorials. He says, “The thing that was new for them was how you write about that, how you communicate ideas about a work of art to other people. That was a skill that they were learning.”
Mark knew that the time constraints related to the EFT would make a submitted writing task unfeasible, so he hit on the idea of combining his aim of developing student’s discipline-specific writing skills with a request he had often received from students. “I wanted to do something that was inherently valuable to the students, and we know (from interacting with them year after year) what students are hungry for: They want to read other students’ writing!“, he reflected.
Task design
The EFT in ARHT1001 was setup as a Canvas quiz weighted at 5%. In each of the first three questions students were presented with a single row from the rubric which would be used to mark their first assessment, and two separate short paragraphs of student writing. Each of the paragraphs of student writing represented an attempt to deploy the same skill that was assessed in the rubric item. (e.g. object analysis, context analysis, etc.)
Students were then simply asked to determine which of the pieces of writing was of a higher standard. After this, participants were presented with two longer (though still relatively short) pieces of student writing and asked to make a judgement about which was of a higher standard (based on all three rubric criteria). Finally, students were asked to provide a very brief written reflection on the task and invited to identify which of the three writing skills they would most like help developing.
Students received automated feedback on all but the final question in the quiz. A ‘wash-up’ activity was run in tutorials where students discussed the task and extended their learning by working together to improve one or more of the short student-writing paragraphs that they had engaged with in the EFT.
Students performed very well in the EFT and Mark was pleased with the quality of work that was submitted for the subsequent first written assessment. Mark was keen to stress that having access to student’s answers to the final question was especially valuable for him as the coordinator of a large unit. He reflected, “…it just put the students’ voices in my head, and nothing is more useful than that when you’re the lecturer and only the lecturer… Of course, I chat with [students] after class… but this gave me access to everybody’s thinking, in a really manageable way.”
Getting students ‘assessment ready’
CASF1001, Vicky Browne
In Studio Foundation 1, students were already undertaking a small ‘work in progress’ presentation in week 4. However, rather than rejigging this pre-existing assessment task to meet the requirements of the EFT, Vicky decided to design a new EFT to try to improve students’ experiences of that pre-existing task. Vicky said, “In our unit of study feedback [in 2023], one of the things that came up was students wanting to know and have more clear expectations about what they’re doing for assessment… that was a consistent comment and something that we were keen to respond to.”
Task design
Vicky implemented a 0% weighted multiple choice Canvas quiz as the CASF1001 EFT. Some questions in the quiz focussed specifically on the mechanics of the week 4 ‘work in progress’ presentation (what students were supposed to present, what needed to be submitted along with the presentation, etc.). Other questions focused on students’ understanding of the theme that their presentation was supposed to explore. Further questions aimed to help students start explicating links between this theme and a small research compendium that they had been asked to engage with in their presentations.
Because Vicky had a clear learning intention related to preparing students for this more substantial upcoming task, she was able to structure students’ engagement with the quiz in a way that complemented this goal. “We ran [the early feedback task] in class…. I even let the students talk to each other,” she reflected. “It was quite casual, but that meant it was open and relaxed… the outcome that I wanted was for them to understand what the expectations were in the next few weeks for their assignment – to get some conversation started about what they were going to do.”
Students received automated feedback on each of the quiz questions shortly after the EFT was completed. Vicky reported that students seemed more organised and less anxious than in previous years when it came time to undertake their Week 4 presentations.
Reinforcing core discipline-specific skills
HSTY1044, Simon Graham
Simon wanted to design an EFT that would provide students with an effective means of self-assessing their capacity to succeed in HSTY1044. He was hesitant about assessing students on the content that had been covered in the first two lectures of the unit because he had doubts about both the equity and the utility of such a content focused approach – many learners take longer than two weeks to process and ‘bed down’ ideas, and the capacity to merely recall content is a limited indicator of capacity to succeed in a tertiary history course. “I thought, what I need to do is look at what kind of student knowledge is there going to be [already present] and how can we leverage that,” he said.
Most first-year history students have undertaken at least some formal study of history in their secondary education (be that recent or some time ago; in Australia or overseas). So, Simon decided to design a task that would help students to recognise, assess and leverage their existing historical analysis skills.
Task design
Simon implemented a 20 question (10% weighted) multiple-choice online quiz that assessed students’ historical analysis skills with a focus on source analysis. In each question students were presented with a photograph of a historical source related to the First World War and asked to answer questions about how and why that source might be used by historians. Students were also presented with questions around broader key historical concepts (perspective, periodisation, etc) – again directly related to specific sources. Students received automated feedback upon completion of the task. General feedback about the cohort’s performance (common mistakes etc) was shared in subsequent classes and Simon provided some further guidance around those questions that a significant proportion of students struggled with.
Simon is already working towards incorporating student feedback relating to the HSTY1044 EFT into his future EFT design planning. He says, “[Based on feedback from students] I’ve been looking at trying to address a wider scope of historical skills rather than just focusing on source analysis. I haven’t gotten as far as determining exactly how I will do that in a multiple-choice format, but I’m starting to think that through.”
Tell me more!
- Teaching Resources Hub contains comprehensive guides to all things EFT.
- FASS Teaching and Learning Hub – for FASS colleagues, contains information about faculty specific support for Early Feedback Tasks, as well as access to exemplar tasks (including some of those described in this article).
- Supporting students through pre-census assessment and feedback – review of the literature on early feedback and examples of suitable assessments from across the disciplines.
- Marking and feedback of early feedback tasks (EFT) – advice on how to provide meaningful feedback and links to associated literature
