Feedback for Future Learning

Reflecting on Feedback

Introduction

Good feedback is essential for learning. We receive feedback in lots of different ways – at University, from colleagues or employers, from customers or clients, even from friends and family. It’s important that you can use the wide range of feedback available to its full advantage.

As a student, feedback can help you to see what you are doing well in relation to your studies, and also help you to identify how you could improve your performance in the future.

Online learning units

These units explore the nature and purpose of feedback, giving useful tips about how to get the most out of your feedback whilst at University and beyond.

We will give you simple tools to help you view feedback positively and use it to improve your future learning.

We will also look beyond University, exploring how feedback can help you to succeed in the workplace – whether on placement, in part-time work, or in your first graduate job.

Aims and objectives

By completing this learning unit, you should be able to:

Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers (SWOB) in relation to how you deal with academic feedback

Describe and differentiate between the two key types of reflection

Understand why reflection is useful when engaging with academic feedback

Apply the Gibbs model of reflection to your own experience

Identify sources of support that can help you make the most of the feedback that you receive at GCU

Reflection

What does it mean to be reflective?

How can you reflect?

What exactly is reflection?

What are the benefits of using

reflection?

How does it relate to academic

feedback and learning?

You may already be asking yourself some or all of these questions. This learning unit will equip you with some basic knowledge and understanding of how to reflect. This should help you maximise the learning opportunities available from the feedback you receive.

What is reflection?

Being ‘reflective’ has been identified as one of the key methods of learning from experience.

Reflection is an active process – it can help you develop an understanding of how historical, social, cultural and personal experiences have contributed to how you study or learn.

Reflection can be applied to any aspect of your life. It’s used to help individuals become lifelong learners and to focus their efforts in getting the most out of situations and, ultimately, improve self-performance.

In this unit, we will explore how reflection can help you maximise the learning opportunities available from your academic feedback.

Types of reflection

Reflection often takes two forms, as identified by Schon (1983):

Reflection-in-action, which occurs intuitively in experienced professionals, e.g. when an experienced professional in a meeting decides to change their approach because of dynamics within the group. This happens almost automatically.

Reflection-on-action, which involves involves consciously thinking about a specific experience after it has happened, with the aim of learning from the experience. For example, when a new graduate employee takes some time to think about his or her performance in a team meeting. This would happen retrospectively and away from the scene of the meeting. Reflection-on-action requires knowledge of ‘how to reflect’, as it is a thinking or cognitive process.

This unit will focus on reflection-on-action, giving you tools to implement these strategies yourself – specifically thinking about how you use academic feedback.

[Schon, D. (1983) ‘The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action’, Temple Smith, London]

Who needs to reflect?

• Reflection is part of lifelong learning – we all need to be able to reflect.

• Reflection is a key component of successful learning. Reflecting on your progress is vital to ensure that you get the most out of your learning experiences, and can use them to their maximum benefit.

• Thinking ahead to your future career, professional bodies often require their members to engage in some form of continuing professional development (CPD) to keep up to date with new ideas and practices in their profession. Reflection is a key method of identifying your own CPD needs, whilst at University and throughout your career.

Why is reflection important for learning?

Reflection can help you maximise your learning opportunities, making sure you get the most out of each opportunity.

Reflection encourages ‘active learning’ and can help you to:• Identify your learning needs.• Seek appropriate learning opportunities or support.• Improve your learning experience and achievement.

Reflection helps you think critically about how you learn and how to make your learning even more successful.

Reflection is a key process in personal development planning, including career planning.

Reflection and academic feedback

• Students are often unsure about what to do with the academic feedback that they receive. In other words, they don’t know how to act on the feedback.

• Reflection can help you identify how you might act upon your academic feedback and how you might use it to improve your overall academic performance.

• Reflection can also help you recognise some of the reasons for your level of achievement – for example, factors that have contributed to high marks or possibly inhibited your learning, resulting in low marks.

• Reflection helps you understand yourself better, and you can use this knowledge to help achieve your learning goals.

How will reflecting on feedback help me?

Taking the time to reflect on your academic feedback can help you to:

Identify how you learn best and under what conditions.

Identify specific areas for development so that you can seek additional support and guidance.

Identify particular skills you have never fully acknowledged before.

Plan how best to use study time.

Plan how you will approach future coursework or exams.

Help you achieve your full potential in your studies.

Knowing yourself - Activity

Being reflective begins with the assumption that you can learn from your own experiences. Therefore, it’s important that you know yourself and can articulate your own strengths and weaknesses, and can identify any opportunities and barriers to your learning. This is known as a SWOB analysis.

For this activity, you should use an A4 sheet of paper and organise it as below:

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing yourself – SWOB Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Barriers

SWOB Analysis

A SWOB analysis helps you think deeply about your experiences of using academic feedback in the past. This may be at School, College, University or a combination of all three. Think about your whole experience to date in terms of how you have engaged with academic feedback.

Click on each section in turn for prompt questions. Note down your responses on your A4 sheet of paper.

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing yourself – Strengths

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Barriers

SWOB Analysis

Think about how you’ve used academic feedback in the past:

What are you good at doing with/about academic feedback?

What are you proud of doing with/about academic feedback?

How have you used academic feedback successfully?

Take five minutes to consider these questions. Write your responses down on your sheet of paper under the ‘Strengths’ section.

Don’t worry if you struggle to answer some of the questions or if you only partially answer them – the idea is to get you thinking rather than there being a right or wrong answer. You might never have considered these questions before and that’s okay too!

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing yourself – Weaknesses

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Barriers

SWOB Analysis

Think about how you’ve used academic feedback in the past:

What would you like to change about how you engage with academic feedback?

What strategies have you tried to use in relation to academic feedback that have been unsuccessful?

Is there a particular type or form of academic feedback that doesn’t work for you or that you don’t like?

Take five minutes to consider these questions. Write your responses down on your sheet of paper under the ‘Weaknesses’ section.

Don’t worry if you struggle to answer some of the questions or if you only partially answer them – the idea is to get you thinking rather than there being a right or wrong answer. You might never have considered these questions before and that’s okay too!

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing yourself – Opportunities

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Barriers

SWOB Analysis

Think about how you might improve your engagement with academic feedback:

What support is available to help you? Who can help you?

Take five minutes to consider these questions. Remember to write your responses down on your sheet of paper under the ‘Opportunities’ section.

Don’t worry if you struggle to answer some of the questions or if you only partially answer them – the idea is to get you thinking rather than there being a right or wrong answer. You might never have considered these questions before and that’s okay too! There will be also more information on where you can get support later in this unit.

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing yourself – Barriers

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Barriers

SWOB Analysis

Think about how you’ve used academicfeedback in the past:

What barriers or obstacles are in your way of achieving your potential?

(You might wish to separate these barriers into those which you have control of and those which you don’t).

Take five minutes to consider these questions. Remember to write your responses down on your sheet of paper under the ‘Barriers’ section.

Don’t worry if you struggle to answer some of the questions or if you only partially answer them – the idea is to get you thinking rather than there being a right or wrong answer. You might never have considered these questions before and that’s okay too! There will be also more information on where you can get support later in this unit.

[Jasper, M. (2003) ‘Beginning reflection practice’, Nelson Thomas, Cheltenham]

Knowing Yourself – SWOB Activity

Please keep your SWOB analysis handy as it will be useful in the next activity.

The next slide shows a completed example of a SWOB from a Level 1 student who has looked back at how he engaged with feedback

during his first year at GCU.

• You should have

Strengths:

I always make sure that I collect my feedback from my tutors.

Research methods is my favourite subject and I always make an appointment to discuss my feedback with the research methods tutor.

I have used the written feedback and verbal feedback on my research methods assignments to help identify the sessions from the Learning Development Centre that I should attend – these have includes sessions on referencing and academic writing.

Weaknesses:

I don’t always understand the what the written feedback from my tutors mean. Comments like “try to critically analyse” concern me as I’m not sure what they really mean.

Although I always collect my written feedback – I don’t always understand it but I find verbal feedback better.

Opportunities:

There are lots of options for support, e.g. my class tutors, module leaders, the Learning Development Centre.

I can also access peer support and the student mentoring scheme.

Staff in the library are supportive too.

Barriers:

I often focus on the negative and therefore expect to get poor marks – even although this is not the case.

Example of a completed SWOB

Knowing Yourself – SWOB Activity

• Well done for completing your SWOB analysis! You have taken the first steps towards applying reflection to your learning.

• You should now have a clearer understanding of how you have engaged with academic feedback so far.

• While it is good to think about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and associated barriers, this is only helpful if you use this knowledge to create an action plan for the future. This is a key step in reflection. Creating an action plan uses your previous experience to inform and influence your future experiences.

• The next learning activity encourages you to reflect upon a specific feedback episode and work through the reflective process. This may be much more specific than the previous activity.

Gibbs reflective cycle

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

The Gibbs reflective cycle is a common process used for reflection.

Click on each stage of the process for more information about what’s involved.

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle - Description

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

Describe in detail the feedback experience you are reflecting on.

When was it?

What happened?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle - Feelings

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

How did the experience make you feel?

How did you feel about the outcome?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle - Evaluation

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

What was good about the experience?

What was bad about the experience?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle - Analysis

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

Why might things have gone well / not so well?

How did you contribute to this outcome?

How did others contribute?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle - Conclusion

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

What have you learned from examining this experience?

How might things have been different?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle – Action Plan

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

How would you deal with this situation if it occurred again?

What will you now do in the future?

What key actions will you take?

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle – Activity

You should now be familiar with Gibbs reflective cycle. This is a really useful tool to use for reflecting on specific experiences.

Please now take some time to reflect on a specific occasion when you were given academic feedback, using the Gibbs reflective cycle. Drawing the cycle out on a sheet of paper may help – we’ve provided it again on the next slide as a guide.

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Gibbs reflective cycle – Activity

1. Description

2. Feelings

3. Evaluation

4. Analysis

5. Conclusion

6. Action Plan

[Gibbs, G. (1988) ‘Learning by doing: a guide to learning and teaching methods’, Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford]

Reflection and PPACT academic advising

• Reflecting on your academic feedback can really help you to improve your future performance at University.

• The PPACT academic advising process at GCU is intended to help you develop personal, academic and professional skills. You will be allocated a named academic advisor, whom you should meet with (individually or as part of a group) three times a year to discuss your academic studies, any co-curricular activities that may enhance your profile, and to reflect on any issues that could impact on your overall performance at University.

• Ongoing discussion and dialogue with your PPACT academic advisor, lecturers and Module Leaders can help you get the most from from reflection, and from academic feedback, as you progress throughout your studies.

• For more information about academic advising in your programme, please contact your Programme Leader or Level Tutor.

Sources of support at GCU

Visit the Feedback for Future Learning website

Contact your Programme Leader or Module Leader

Contact your Learning Development Centre

Access GCU Support Services

Access SMILE

Visit the Students’ Association

Contact a Student Mentor

Contact Us

If you’re still not sure of who to contact or if you’d like any further information or support, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at the contact details below and we’ll be happy to help.

Feedback for Future LearningB002, Britannia Building 70 Cowcaddens RoadGlasgow, G4 0BA

Web: www.gcu.ac.uk/futurelearningEmail: studentfeedback@gcu.ac.uk

Done...

Well done – you’ve now completed this learning unit!

We will now look beyond University, exploring how feedback can help you to succeed in the workplace – whether on placement,

in part-time work, or in your first graduate job.

www.gcu.ac.uk/futurelearning