A case study exploring a collaborative project between Abingdon & Witney College and Newham College, exploring whether providing students with digital feedback could accelerate student progress, as well as reduce the total amount of marking time for a teacher. The project partners wanted to enable more learners to progress from Level 2 to Level 3 courses by giving staff greater time to plan inspirational, challenging and engaging lessons - whilst at the same time making feedback more incisive and effective.
In order to define the scale of the challenge, the project partners conducted baseline research to find out how learners received and interpreted written feedback. Project leads established control groups, which continued to receive feedback in the traditional way, whilst other groups of learners received feedback using at least one of the digital tools. Across the span of the project, each group received at least two formative assessments and one summative assessment.
From the baseline research, 40% of participating learners had reported they were unable to understand feedback effectively. By the end of the project, only 8% reported the same. Both colleges reported that learners had made more progress in the project groups compared with the control groups (on average - 6% higher test scores from starting points). Teachers were equally divided as to whether their had been any time-saving advantage using digital tools, with around a third of teachers feeling that it had, a third that it had taken even longer, and a similar number that it had made no difference.
OTLA