Sorry, I’ve changed email accounts
and the listserv bounced the email back to me. I’m re-forwarding to
the list.
-Derek
Associate Dean
for Graduate
Programs in Communication
College of Communications &
Information Studies
133 Grehan Building
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506-0042
Tel: (859) 257-7805
Fax: (859) 323-9879
Email: [log in to unmask]
Faculty website: http://www.uky.edu/~drlane
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From:
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006
1:32 PM
To: 'Peter Coughlin';
[log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Use of Peer Appraisal
Forms and including name of member in team providing the feedback
Importance: High
Peter,
Your students are correct in their challenge.
Feedback SHOULD be direct, clear, and make members accountable to the
rest of the team. The value of the feedback is that all of the members of
the team have the opportunity to discuss the feedback and make performance
improvements.
Peer feedback/appraisal is a
critical component of TBL. However, the collaborative/cooperative/TBL
learning research is clear about the impact of anonymous feedback—it can do more damage than it can
help. I encourage you to review Michaelsen’s (1988) guidelines for
“Making Feedback Helpful” that was originally published in volume
13, issue 1 of the Organizational Behavior
Teaching Review on pages 109-113. In the updated article, he
and his co-author Emily Schultheiss outline the following seven
"Characteristics of Helpful Feedback." Helpful Feedback is:
(1) Descriptive, not evaluative, and
is "owned" by the sender.
(2) Specific, not general.
(3) Honest and sincere.
(4) Expressed in terms relevant to
the self-perceived needs of the receiver.
(5) Timely and in context.
(6) Desired by the receiver, not
imposed on him or her.
(7) Usable; concerned with behavior
over which the receiver has control.
If you are simply providing your students the peer
evaluation form (with descriptors) and asking students to complete them
anonymously for each of their team members, you may be missing out on one of
the most powerful TBL experiences—having students develop their own team
peer evaluation procedures and criteria. For more information you can
visit: http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/TBL_PEEREVALS/
It is obviously too late in the semester
to have the teams develop peer evaluation procedures and criteria, but it is
critical that the feedback they do provide to each other follows the seven
characteristics.
Even if you are going to give your students the evaluation
criteria (behavioral descriptors) and the procedures to use, it is vital that
the feedback be OWNED by the sender because anonymous feedback—especially
anonymous negative feedback—destroys trust and group cohesion. On
the other hand, when peer feedback follows the seven characteristics, teams can
discuss their concerns, make corrections, and perform more effectively.
I have been doing some research with the College of
Engineering at the University of Kentucky and have accumulated several criteria
that seem to capture the criteria that undergraduate engineering students
believe are most important. I’ll be presenting a paper at the
National Communication Association conference in
The exchange of helpful feedback
between team members working on design projects is an essential communication
activity to increase team productivity and maintain production quality. It
is, of course, important to determine what constitutes "helpful"
feedback as well as to develop a mechanism using either an internally or
externally derived set of procedures and criteria to evaluate the feedback
process. Data collected from the past two semesters of a senior civil
engineering capstone course indicate that students are able to successfully
integrate peer evaluation procedures and criteria to more successfully
complete their design projects. Our paper reports specific details regarding
the criteria employed as well as the strategies implemented by student civil
engineers. |
I would be interested in seeing the Wright State University
Peer Evaluation Scale with the 12 behavioral descriptors. Will you please
send me a copy? Thanks.
Good luck!
-Derek
Associate Dean
for Graduate
Programs in Communication
College of Communications &
Information Studies
133 Grehan Building
University of Kentucky
Tel: (859) 257-7805
Fax: (859) 323-9879
Email: [log in to unmask]
Faculty website: http://www.uky.edu/~drlane
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER REGARDING THIS TRANSMISSION:
The contents
of this email message and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for
the addressee(s). The information may also be confidential and legally
privileged. This transmission is sent in trust, for the sole purpose of
delivery to the intended recipient(s). If you have received this
transmission in error, any use, reproduction, or dissemination of this
transmission is strictly prohibited. Neither the transmission of this
email message and any attachments nor any error in transmission or misdelivery
shall constitute waiver of any applicable legal privilege. If you are not
the intended recipient, please immediately notify the sender by reply email and
delete this message and any attachments.
From: Team Learning
Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Coughlin
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 11:33
AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Use of Peer Appraisal
Forms and including name of member in team providing the feedback
I am preparing to use a Peer Appraisal feedback form as a component of
the TBL activities for a class of undergraduate students in a human studies
course. The class is divided into five learning teams each with six members.
The model I have introduced is based upon the work of Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine
– Academic Affairs - the Peer Evaluation Scale with 12
behavioural descriptors. The form is initially set up to allow for the student
author's name to be removed prior to the return to each member of the group.
The learning teams in the class have gently challenged this step, suggesting
that feedback should be direct and clear and within the accountability of
working within a team, there can be an opportunity to discuss the feedback with
the person providing the peer appraisal.
There are risks to providing the name of the person completing the feedback,
most obvious being that students will shy away from lower ratings for a peer,
anticipating some negative feedback. However, there is also a sense of validity
to the issue of including the author's name and am wondering if other users of
a peer appraisal scale have experience of including the names of the student
completing the peer appraisal, and any implications?
many thanks
peter c.