student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part B: Building Leadership Capacity - BUS: School of Economics, Finance & Marketing ART Report
Second Semester 2007:
‘Drop-in sessions’ were trialled at scheduled times during the week
to supplement the lectures and demonstration lectures. The sessions were
held in a classroom in Building 108 (three per week, two of which were staffed
by lecturers and one by a tutor). These sessions were promoted at each lecture
(which are mainly held in Capitol Theatre) and in the demonstration lectures
as well as by a course email sent by the Coordinator. In particular, the benefits
of attending these sessions were communicated as an opportunity for students
to get helpful feedback on how they were going in the course, to assist with
difficulties they might be having with their work as well as to provide them
with additional comments on their work.
These benefits were linked to specific GTS items as follows:
Q5 The teaching staff normally give me helpful feedback on how I am going in
this course
Q19 The staff make a real effort to understand difficulties I might be having with
my work
Q20 The staff put a lot of time into commenting on my work
First Semester 2008:
Based on the evaluation from Semester 2, 2007, which will be discussed
in Section 4.0, the drop-in sessions were continued and actively promoted.
A number of other initiatives were developed throughout this semester with
the intention to launch them in Semester 2, 2008. These include:
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Multimedia exercises. The motivation for these exercises was to help
students to understand the relevance of statistics by exploring how
statistics is used in the media. Some of these exercises were trialled late
in Semester 1, 2008 and feedback suggests that this would be a useful
addition to demonstration lectures as it appealed to students across all
disciplinary areas.
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Review of course materials. The course materials were revamped for
implementation in Semester 2, 2008, making the lecture and tutorials
more intertwined. In addition the new textbook which has been adopted
provides convenient online learning opportunities for students.
Second Semester 2008:
A set of four homework assignments each worth 2.5% were incorporated
as additional assessment tasks for students. In total these assignments
contribute to 10% of a student’s final course grade. Marks are emailed
to students, and marked assignments are available for collection from dropin
sessions. Solutions are posted on the DLS with an accompanying video
explaining the solutions. Hence, enhancement of personalised feedback
and student engagement was the focal point for this initiative and the need
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