Students’ Feedback
As closure of the last technical workshop of the term, I wanted to have the feedback and perspective from students regarding the technical sessions. I repeated the activities that we did in the first workshop[1] to get some feedback. The feedback definition changed from the teachers’ transmission of information to a student-centered understanding of the given data toward performance and academic development. (Rovagnati et al., 2021).
The first step was for students to assess their technical skills in the graph. Nothing can be evaluated or analysed without criteria with which to make judgements/assessments. (Gray, Malins, 2005) It is important to consider that the perception of their skills should be based on what they answered on the first day. Why? Because on the first day, they assessed their skills higher than they actually were.
To achieve this, I used tracing paper to place over their first day’s answers. This allowed me to track their perception of their progress relative to their starting point.
As you can see, some students feel their skills have improved, while others feel their skills remain the same. This is interesting because it contrasts a lot with the written feedback the students gave on the tags. Lecturers should utilise a range of feedback modes,including face-to-face, verbal, written, audio and video feedback. (Glazzard, Stones, 2029)
In the case of the tags, 13 students participated (54% of the total). The majority of the feedback said they feel their skills have improved and that they feel more confident with them. They also mention that they need to practice. I did mention to them that the course was designed to support them at the starting point of their journey, but that they will definitely need to practice. The students also mentioned that they enjoyed the sessions and found them helpful. One student mentioned that their skills are still poor, besides making some progress. Definitely something to pay attention to. This information shows that from those 13 students, the 92% feel more confident with their skills. This mean that the curriculum design of the course still needs to improve for that 7.6% that is still struggling.
Since both activities are anonymous, I tried to match some of the tags from the first day with those from the last day based on the handwriting. I wanted to see if I could track some of the individual students’ journeys. Please note that I can be wrong with the matches.
What I can take from the comparison between the individually compared feedback is that they seem more confident and less anxious or confused.
This is a challenging course to teach, because it is not for only graphic designers; it is a course for students who come from other disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, social sciences, other disciplines of design, graphic designers, etc. At the Course Committee Meeting, it was noted that some students find the technical sessions too basic, while others find them adequate. It would be important to find a way to level students during the next unit and for future years. I am currently in talks with the course leader and my technical colleague to find the best way to teach technical skills with the multilevel challenge this course presents.
[1] Refer to this blog post to see the first workshop activities: https://smassieu.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/11/26/second-week-first-technical-session-how-are-you-feeling/
References:
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. (2021). Get looped in on ‘Feedback’: Its history is more than noise, available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-atplay/the-history-of-feedback
Glazzard J., Stones S., 2029, Student Perceptions of Feedback in Higher Education, International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, Vol. 18, No. 11, pp. 38-52, Available at: https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.11.3
Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004) ‘Chapter 5: Interpreting the map: methods of evaluation and analysis’ in Visualizing Research: A guide to the research process in art and design. Farnham: Ashgate.