Trends in research on student learning

Elton, Lewis; Laurillard, Diana

doi:10.1080/03075077912331377131

Cited by 110 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Previous research on student instrumentality and strategic learning (Elton and Laurillard 1979;Swann and Arthurs 1998;Rust 2002) supports the claim that a mark motivates. For our student participants, all of whom take this module as an add-on to their full-time studies and/or jobs, being a strategic learner may not be a matter of choice but of necessity.…”

Section: Weighting and Markingmentioning

confidence: 74%

Tutor feedback on draft essays: developing students’ academic writing and subject knowledge

Court

2012

Journal of Further and Higher Education

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Krista is a Senior Lecturer in TEFL at the University of Cumbria, Lancaster. She has been involved in designing, coordinating and teaching on a wide variety of courses for students and for pre-service and in-service teachers. She is currently involved in an ongoing project within the Faculty of Education exploring the use of essay feedback to develop trainee teachers' language awareness and academic writing skills. This is 2The use of tutor feedback on draft essays: exploring the potential to develop students' academic writing and subject knowledge Providing feedback on drafts of student essays is an accepted means of enacting a social-constructivist approach to assessment, aligning with current views on the value of formative feedback and assessment for learning (AFL). However, the use of this process as a means of improving not only content but also students' academic writing skills has not been widely studied despite a widespread perception that there is scope for intervention. This article explores the developmental potential of a drafting/tutor feedback/redrafting process, with a particular focus on writing skills, on a first-year undergraduate module at a British University. Impact on learning is evaluated via essay data and students' perceptions. The findings of this study suggest that feedback is acted on and that students regard timely, detailed and awareness-raising comments with regard to both content and writing skills as highly developmental. Also noteworthy, however, are the students' perceptions that redrafting is cognitively challenging and time-consuming. There is also evidence suggesting that a high quantity of feedback may have a detrimental impact on less-academically confident students.Questions are raised regarding the use of tutor reformulation and the sustainability of AFL. Finally, some key indicators for improved future practice are presented.

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Section: Weighting and Markingmentioning

confidence: 74%

Tutor feedback on draft essays: developing students’ academic writing and subject knowledge

Court

2012

Journal of Further and Higher Education

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“…Research on assessment in higher education has become central to the development of policies and practices in higher education for decades (Elton and Laurillard 1979;Ramsden 1988;Brown and Glasner 1999;Boud and Falchikov 2007). Some of this research has focused on the effects of assessment on student learning (Harlen and Crick 2003), on the validity, fairness and value of traditional and innovative assessment forms (Struyven, Dochy and Janssens 2005), and on the impact of assessment on the hidden curriculum at university (Sambell, McDowell, and Brown 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students' perceptions of assessment in undergraduate mathematics

Iannone

Simpson

2013

Research in Mathematics Education

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“…Problems with this approach were reported in the literature of the 1970s (Elton and Laurillard, 1979;MacDonald and Jenkins, 1979) when the influence on learning of…”

Section: Experiments That Failedmentioning

confidence: 99%

CAL evaluation: future directions

Gunn¹

2011

Research in Learning Technology

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Formal, experimental methods have proved increasingly difficult to implement, and lack the capacity to generate detailed results when evaluating the impact of CAL on teaching and learning. The rigid nature of experimental design restricts the scope of investigations and the conditions in which studies can be conducted It has also consistently failed to account for all influences on learning. In innovative CAL environments, practical and theoretical development depends on the ability fully to investigate the wide range of such influences. Over the past five years, a customizable evaluation framework has been developed specifically for CAL research. The conceptual approach is defined as Situated Evaluation of CAL (SECAL), and the primary focus is Experiments that failedScientific, experimental methodology was previously considered to be the only acceptable approach to educational research. Two important principles of experimental design are:• to balance individual differences within study populations and so achieve generalizable results, and• to attempt to isolate the effects of a single resource for evaluation purposes.Problems with this approach were reported in the literature of the 1970s (Elton and Laurillard, 1979;MacDonald and Jenkins, 1979) when the influence on learning ofVolume 5 Number I individual and contextual factors was recognized. Similar issues emerged during the 1980s and early 1990s, (Bates, 1981;Spencer, 1991) when the inability to identify which single or combined factors supported learning became a recurrent problem. It was clear that prior knowledge, approaches to learning, provision of appropriate scaffolding, complementary combinations of resources and various contextual factors all influenced the quality of learning outcomes. It was concluded that evaluations must be designed to account for these factors, rather than to balance or disregard them as was previously the norm (Kemmis, 1987, Gunn, 1995.Another problem stemmed from the belief that single studies involving large sample sizes were necessary to produce meaningful results. The rather indiscriminate choice of study populations required to produce the requisite numbers frequently resulted in low motivation and levels of perceived relevance of evaluation tasks to personal and educational goals (Draper et al, 1996;. This suggested that the true potential for learning with CAL could not be reliably assessed unless its use formed an integral part of a course, and evaluations involved only the students on that course. It was thus concluded that the more specific aspects of CAL evaluation could not be served by a general and inflexible research methodology originally designed to measure the uniform and largely predictable behaviour of organisms in the physical sciences. The basis of an alternative methodologyIn the context of the work reported here, development of a suitable methodology began with a review of educational research literature. Critical theory (Carr and Kemmis, 1986), critical ethnography (Angus, 1986) and qualitative methodo...

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Trends in research on student learning

Cited by 110 publications

References 14 publications

Tutor feedback on draft essays: developing students’ academic writing and subject knowledge

Tutor feedback on draft essays: developing students’ academic writing and subject knowledge

Students' perceptions of assessment in undergraduate mathematics

CAL evaluation: future directions

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