Continuous Formative Assessment and Feedback in an Enquiry-Based Laboratory Course

Abstract

Here we report on the successful implementation of an online experimental summary sheet that enabled the continual student monitoring of a large cohort of students undertaking a 6 week enquiry-based laboratory project. Students submitted a weekly research summary that contained information about their data analysis and future experimental plans. These experimental summary sheets, which were viewed on a weekly basis by members of the teaching team, facilitated a process of continuous formative assessment, the provision of generic feedback and differentiated instruction during the laboratory course. Collectively this ensured each student received the support they needed during their project work whilst minimising additional staff and student workloads.

Keywords:

• continuous formative assessment
• feedback
• experiential learning

The majority of UK universities now adopt a modular degree system, a limitation of this in the biosciences is that summative laboratory assessment often comes towards the end of the module (or at least after completion of a series of laboratory classes). This means that the extent of student understanding/learning is determined only once laboratory reports are submitted, when it is too late to correct experimental errors and inform development. Giving timely feedback (prior to summative assessment) that addresses student misunderstanding is increasingly difficult due to larger group sizes and greater educational diversity (Felder & Brent 2005). Furthermore, the move away from laboratory classes with predictable outcomes to more student-led enquiry based experimental learning makes it more challenging to monitor ability and understanding across the entire cohort (Adams 2009). With the lack of knowledge of student performance in the laboratory on a weekly basis resulting in staff unaware of areas students are struggling to understand (Allen & Tanner 2005).

One way of increasing provision of feedback in laboratory teaching is to include formative proforma-style mini reports (Gibbs et al. 1993). However, scheduling of such assessments results in a significant increase in time spent assessing student reports (Hughes 2004) and increased workload of submission of regular formative assessments may not be well received by students even if alignment to the final assessment is made clear and timely feedback provided (Struyven & Janssens 2002). Regular assessment can also favour a more strategic approach to learning with students becoming less engaged with the acquisition of core laboratory skills and more assessment driven (Struyven & Janssens 2002). Improving feedback is a key agenda for higher education and is a critical weakness of many UK institutions in the National Student Survey. It has been shown that continual generic feedback improves student engagement with feedback, enabling them to recognise the importance of this to ‘feed-forward’ into the next assessment (Race 2005, Carless 2006). Knight & Yorke (2003) suggest that although students value traditional routes of feedback, ‘general feedback has the greater power to stimulate learning’. Therefore the importance of monitoring continual student learning within a laboratory environment to gain a better overview of student ability, understanding and educational diversity to provide comprehensive generic feedback and adoption of teaching styles to support all students, cannot be underestimated.

Here we report on the successful implementation of continual student monitoring in an enquiry-based laboratory class with a large cohort, which ensured each student received the support they needed, whilst minimising additional staff and student workloads

The Project and Intervention

Second year BSc Biochemistry and Biomedical Science students at Keele University (UK) undertake a six week laboratory project which aims to determine the substrate specificity of alcohol dehydrogenase. This project adopts an enquiry-based approach that focuses on increasing student ability to critically analyse experimental data and most importantly, gain experience at experimental design. Weekly tutorials run alongside the laboratory component giving students the opportunity to analyse data and plan proceeding experiments, with staff guidance.

From a teaching perspective this level of student autonomy increases the requirement to keep students engaged with their research strategies, data analysis and literature searches, whilst student diversity in terms of ability makes it difficult to determine what level of help and support each individual student requires. In the last two years student numbers have increased from 60 to 116 (in the current study), which exacerbated the problems for the three tutors in keeping track of how each individual student was approaching the project and associated data analysis. To address these issues a series of experimental summaries were devised, which were submitted by each student within 48 hours of the weekly tutorial through assignment drop boxes on the virtual learning environment (VLE). The one page summaries were designed to help students focus on: keeping up-to-date laboratory records; analysing data; experimental design; submission of their data (commenting on its accuracy); further methods development; and, the proceeding experiments. Summaries were viewed by the tutors prior to the subsequent laboratory session and areas that were causing problems were identified; a list of common problems highlighted by the summaries is shown in Table 1. Any universal problems were addressed at the beginning of each laboratory session in the form of generic feedback, therefore allowing any specific issues to be addressed in a timely manner. Content for subsequent summaries was modified to reflect the direction of student understanding, ensuring the projects were learner-led with appropriate tutor support. Furthermore each students understanding and learning was monitored and individual students that had specific issues regarding the comprehension of their experimental design and interpretation were approached and further support provided.

Table 1 Common areas of student misunderstanding/poor engagement identified by continual student monitoring

Common areas of misunderstanding/poor engagement
Errors in data calculation: dilutions, molarity, and preparing buffers
Incorrect representation of data and poor formatting of graphs/tables
Insufficient data sets for appropriate analysis
Poor or limited interpretation of results
Lack of engagement with appropriate literature to support conclusions and direct experiment plans
Unrealistic experimental aims

Student Evaluation

Student participation averaged 92% submission each week. Table 2 shows that students felt that completing weekly experimental summaries helped them stay focussed on analysing data throughout the six week project and encouraged them to plan experiments in advance of laboratory sessions. Students also found the generic and individual feedback useful (see Table 2) and a selection of comments are shown in Figure 1.

Table 2 Student feedback. Students were given a number of questions relating to the content and format of the practical classes, IT sessions and weekly summaries/formative feedback. In total 76 students out of 116 completed the questionnaire. Analyses of selected questions are shown

	% Strongly agree	% Agree	% Neutral	% Disagree	% Strongly disagree
The pre-laboratory weekly research summaries helped me focus on analysing my data each week.	45	39	15	1	0
The weekly summaries helped me plan what I was going to do in the following session.	36	51	12	1	0
I received general feedback with the rest of the class on any areas I needed to focus on and/or I received individual feedback on areas where I had made some minor errors	32	38	21	5	4
I found the feedback process useful; it helped me to continue analysing my data correctly, plan my work, and think about the report write-up during the project	36	41	21	1	1
Submitting the weekly summaries via the University VLE was easier than having to submit hard copies or other formative assessments	70	25	4	1	0

Figure 1 Examples of student comments from feedback questionnaire. In addition to the Likert-style questionnaire students were also invited to give any general comments on the project, weekly summaries and associated feedback

Discussion

In this study, we demonstrated that continual student monitoring to facilitate the provision of formative generic feedback and differentiated instruction is achievable with the larger student cohorts now entering higher education in the UK, without significant increases in staff workload. The use of short weekly summaries enabled to us to gain sufficient understanding of student development without the need for more detailed and lengthy formative assessments. Feedback from students demonstrated that the weekly online submissions during tutorial sessions did not generate any additional workload and that oral feedback, rather than in written format, was well received.

We found that recognising and supporting individual students’ learning needs enhanced student engagement with their project work, increased confidence in their abilities and improved task motivation. Identifying ‘troublesome knowledge’ (Meyer & Land 2003) throughout the project allowed for a more dynamic, fluid learning environment where we were able to be more responsive to students’ approaches to learning and adapt the learning environment accordingly.