Supporting students: transcript part 1

Andrew Smith

So what's good feedback? Good feedback is focused, and students have an opportunity to act on this.

It's generally timely, so state clearly in the course descriptor the turnaround from submission to return with feedback and marks.

Ideally this should be two weeks. It should be relevant, it should be meaningful, use common language and avoid complicated terminology.

It should be encouraging, show students where they went wrong, and offer suggestions for improvement.

Avoid unfocused comments, sarcastic comments and comments that begin with "you need to..."

Communicate to student what you mean by feedback, don't spoon feed. Make comments that guide, encourage, and inform how they are progressing. Allow students to make time to receive verbal feedback too if you can. And feedback for first years, give early feedback and set a small task that allows for feedback prior to a larger assessment.

So consider linking the two. Consider peer review and set specific criteria for your students to follow when they do this as well.

Student self-assessment, this is also helpful and report the results on common feedback to all students in an assessment.

So for common errors, and how to address these. And consider giving this in video format as well.

Christina Sadowski

Clear communication with students is an important retention strategy.

Using regular Moodle forum posts is a great way to keep both face to face and online students informed of what's happening in your course.

Moodle has a few functions which allows you to contact students who haven't been engaged with their online or face to face activities.

You can set up a progress bar and then you can easily see which students have been involved in their activities and you can use Moodle to send them a message asking them to contact you and see if there have been any problems that you can help them with.

Marcus Probert

Things can happen during a student's time at the university such as: medical issues, hardship and trauma, other such things.

If that occurs and if a student presents with such issues. It's really important that you show empathy, listen to the student and that you can point them in the right direction. So, sending them to the counselling service will allow them to be able to seek support for their issues.

But also possibly apply for special consideration, things like assessment extensions and deferred examinations.

If you have a student undertaking one of your programs who has a disability and presents to you about that disability. It's important to refer them to the disability liaison unit, where we can provide them with support and organise reasonable adjustments to assist them with their study.

Amy Barnhouse

If you've been wondering how to keep up to date on student support services, ;one of the first places you might want to check out is the FedNews items.

Student Futures and Student Connect both put up their new and latest student support services on FedNews.

Most of you will probably be familiar with PASS and yourtutor, the after hours tutoring for students.

We also have learning skills advisors, who are available to come into your classroom, and teach writing skills workshops and well as referencing workshops.

The library offers a variety of workshops to help our students, and you can always contact Student Connect and Student Futures to find out what new services they are offering.

And finally you can check out the website. We have the Study Skills website as well as the current students website, that contains a variety of information on our student support services that the University offers.

So when you have a chance go take a look at those and keep yourself up to date on everything the university has to offer for our students