Using Active Feedback to Develop Students’ Critical Thinking Skills
Thursday 16 May 14:00-15:30 at Radisson Blu hotel in room Alcyone 2 (mezzanine)
Encouraging students to take ownership of their own learning journey and to think critically, can often be a challenge (particularly with quantitative material). By turning active learning into active feedback (generated by students themselves) we can move away from models that rely on keeping students chained to staff feedback comments. This is a positive for both staff and students. Adapting to an active feedback perspective allows us to build learning and teaching strategies that encourage critical thinking, with the students taking more agency over their own learning journey. We can apply this to both in-class and our-of-class experiences, but how?
Dr Suzanne McCallum (University of Glasgow) will lead a hands-on workshop on how you can turn active learning into active feedback to develop students’ critical thinking skills in the quantitative parts of the accounting curriculum. A short explanation of active feedback will be followed by an interactive demonstration of concrete examples used successfully in a first year Financial Accounting course. In this hands-on session, you will experience the ideas in practice from a student’s perspective, by completing a series of active feedback activities. You will see how planning and scaffolding a series of active learning activities that incorporate opportunities for the students to generate active feedback can in fact help encourage critical thinking and increase student agency, without the need for additional staff feedback comments on students’ work.
Adopting this approach requires a shift in perspective and requires a little initial planning. The hands-on session will demonstrate the power of active feedback and the many benefits for both staff and students. Advice, hints and tips on how to move towards this approach will be shared, along with the real-life examples covered in the session. You will therefore leave the room with new ideas and the tools to implement them.
Bio:
Suzanne McCallum is Associate Head (Learning & Teaching) of Accounting & Finance within the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow. Her teaching focuses on Accounting at all levels, dealing with both qualitative and quantitative issues. She has publications in the area of accounting education and assessment and feedback, particularly focused on turning active learning into active feedback & encouraging critical thinking and formative assessment.