Minerva Elements Records

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    Feedback in higher education: aligning academic intent and student sensemaking
    Ryan, T ; Henderson, M ; Ryan, K ; Kennedy, G (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022-01-25)
    Research indicates that effective learner-centred feedback requires learner agency, impact and sensemaking. While scholars are focusing on supporting agency and impact, limited research has addressed sensemaking. This is problematic, because if learners fail to understand feedback, impact is likely to be reduced. In response, this study examines (non) alignment between teacher intent and student sensemaking of authentic feedback comments. The sample included four teachers and eighteen students from two Australian universities. Data were collected via stimulated recall interviews and a feedback coding task. The results suggest that sensemaking of strength-based comments, critiques and actionable information was aided when the comments were clear and specific. On the other hand, sensemaking was limited when comments were designed to mitigate against negative affect, overloaded with multiple intentions, or overly brief. This study informs theory around learner-centred feedback design which, in turn, improves the likelihood that teacher comments will be interpreted accurately by learners.
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    Writing analytics across essay tasks with different cognitive load demands
    Oliveira, EA ; Conijn, R ; Galvao De Barba, P ; Trezise, K ; van Zaanen, M ; Kennedy, G ; Gregory, S ; Warburton, S ; Parkes, M (ASCILITE, 2020)
    Essay tasks are a widely used form of assessment in higher education. Writing analytics can assist with challenges related to using essay tasks at scale and to identifying different issues in academic integrity. In this paper, we combined two techniques to investigate how students’ writing analytics varied across essay tasks with different cognitive load, considering both their typing behavior (i.e., writing process) and writing style (i.e., writing product). We also examined their relationship across these essay tasks. Findings showed that writing processes change across tasks with different cognitive load: when cognitive load increases, the interword intervals (indicator of planning and/or reviewing processes) increased, the burst length (indicator of translation processes) decreased, and the number of revisions per minute (indicator of reviewing processes) decreased. In contrast to the relation between the writing process and cognitive load, the relation between the writing product and cognitive load was found less clear. The results showed small and mixed effects of the tasks differing in cognitive load on the different writing product metrics. Hence, although the writing product follows from the writing process, the relation between cognitive load and the writing product and process appears to be less straightforward.