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Involving Undergraduates in Assessment: Assisting Peers to Provide Constructive Feedback
Author(s) -
Signorini Adriana
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
assessment update
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1536-0725
pISSN - 1041-6099
DOI - 10.1002/au.30002
Subject(s) - constructive , citation , computer science , mathematics education , library science , psychology , programming language , process (computing)
3 S oon after it was launched in 2005, the University of California, Merced (UCM) was designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution. The campus currently enrolls almost 6,200 students, with projected growth to 10,000 by 2020. For a research university, UCM has relatively high percentages of Pell grant recipients (60 percent) and firstgeneration college goers (62 percent). Overall, our undergraduates, who represent 94 percent of total enrollment at UCM, are particularly at risk for not finishing a college degree. The Center for Research on Teaching Excellence at UCM sponsors the Students Assessing Teaching and Learning (SATAL) program, which trains undergraduates in research design, data gathering, and effective reporting to support faculty with their assessment projects. In reciprocal communication with students, SATAL students, as well as instructors, need to make sure that feedback is constructive. For example, a student’s comment, “This class is too early,” is not helpful for an instructor who is looking for ways to improve learning in a class. One of the research projects carried out by the SATAL program last spring was the feedback initiative (FI), targeting the goal of assisting students to provide constructive feedback.