student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part B: Building Leadership Capacity - BUS: School of Economics, Finance & Marketing ART ReportSecond Semester 2007:‘Drop-in sessions’ were trialled at scheduled times during the weekto supplement the lectures and demonstration lectures. The sessions wereheld in a classroom in Building 108 (three per week, two of which were staffedby lecturers and one by a tutor). These sessions were promoted at each lecture(which are mainly held in Capitol Theatre) and in the demonstration lecturesas well as by a course email sent by the Coordinator. In particular, the benefitsof attending these sessions were communicated as an opportunity for studentsto get helpful feedback on how they were going in the course, to assist withdifficulties they might be having with their work as well as to provide themwith 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 inthis courseQ19 The staff make a real effort to understand difficulties I might be having withmy workQ20 The staff put a lot of time into commenting on my workFirst Semester 2008:Based on the evaluation from Semester 2, 2007, which will be discussedin Section 4.0, the drop-in sessions were continued and actively promoted.A number of other initiatives were developed throughout this semester withthe intention to launch them in Semester 2, 2008. These include:––Multimedia exercises. The motivation for these exercises was to helpstudents to understand the relevance of statistics by exploring howstatistics is used in the media. Some of these exercises were trialled latein Semester 1, 2008 and feedback suggests that this would be a usefuladdition to demonstration lectures as it appealed to students across alldisciplinary areas.––Review of course materials. The course materials were revamped forimplementation in Semester 2, 2008, making the lecture and tutorialsmore intertwined. In addition the new textbook which has been adoptedprovides convenient online learning opportunities for students.Second Semester 2008:A set of four homework assignments each worth 2.5% were incorporatedas additional assessment tasks for students. In total these assignmentscontribute to 10% of a student’s final course grade. Marks are emailedto students, and marked assignments are available for collection from dropinsessions. Solutions are posted on the DLS with an accompanying videoexplaining the solutions. Hence, enhancement of personalised feedbackand student engagement was the focal point for this initiative and the needPage 97