Leveraging Radical Creativity for The New Era of Hybrid Learning
Concurrent Session 7
Brief Abstract
While the power of feedback in teaching and learning is undeniable, it is challenging to facilitate effective feedback, especially in online and hybrid environments. Educators face several pedagogical challenges alongside finding scalable platforms for meaningful feedback. Come learn about innovative teaching approaches through Microsoft Teams and the FeedbackFruits Tool Suite.
Presenters
Extended Abstract
The power of feedback in teaching and learning is undeniable, and it is listed among the top 10 influencing factors on student achievement (Hattie & Timperley 2007). Peer feedback can not only “reduce the gap between the current performance and the desired outcomes” (Ibid.), but has also been proven to enhance understanding and motivation (Hareli & Hess 2008). However, it can be challenging to facilitate effective feedback in any learning context, and even more so in online and hybrid environments. Educators often find themselves facing several pedagogical challenges, such as free-riding in group work, low feedback quality, or result-oriented assessment. Furthermore, providing a platform for meaningful feedback in large cohorts can be challenging to scale and often involves large amounts of manual work. These challenges call for innovative teaching approaches and practices that encourage collaboration and critical thinking without being additionally burdensome to the educator.
The Educause Top 10 Issues for 2022 defines Radical Creativity as “helping students prepare for the future by giving them tools and learning spaces that foster creative practices and collaborations”. As higher education moves into the era of hybrid learning, we must consider how radical creativity impacts each of our roles and the overall institutional transformation. Hybrid learning brings the opportunity to redefine and redesign our tools and learning spaces for more effective and more empowering opportunities for both students and educators.
This session will highlight how pedagogical technologies such as Microsoft Teams and the FeedbackFruits Tool Suite can be used to leverage student interaction for high-quality feedback and lasting engagement. The FeedbackFruits Tool Suite is an all-in-one platform for active and collaborative learning that integrates into Microsoft Teams and other learning management systems, enabling the educator to streamline effective learning activities, such as self-, peer, and faculty assessment in online and hybrid environments.
Higher education is more than 1,000 years old and sometimes it feels as though “we’ve always done it this way” overshadows the possibilities for integration of technologies that could greatly impact the students we serve. Microsoft and FeedbackFruits are forward-thinking companies whose solutions are informed by best practices and open up the opportunities for new practices to emerge.
In a synchronous setting, Teams attendees are able to complete Quizzes, interact within Team Based Learning, participate in Interactive Slide Presentations, and complete assignments during an active Microsoft Teams meeting. Educators and students are dynamically informed of progress, time spent on subjects and questions, and the outcomes to ensure course content time allocation is applicable and conversations are engaging.
FeedbackFruits enhances the MS Teams meeting momentum to create a continuous learning experience. Educators are able to auto-upload recordings into interactive videos or documents for post meeting interactive feedback on materials, quizzes, reviews, or key lecture assignments. All of these options can be fortified with paired grading rubrics to enforce engagement for reading reviews or providing feedback for other students or just by allowing assignment points for correct responses to be allocated. This allows instructors to react to the flow of each individual lecture to ensure learning gaps are closed and the areas that require reiteration are reinforced.
Furthermore, the session will include a use case from Oslo Metropolitan University, whose educators integrated the FeedbackFruits tools into MS Teams and Canvas to leverage self- and peer assessment for the development of 21st-century skills. In a teacher training course, the instructors aimed to help students develop feedback and critical thinking skills, while creating a collaborative and interactive classroom within the MS Teams environment. FeedbackFruits Peer Review was then chosen to help them achieve these goals. By the end of the course, the instructors noted an increase in students’ participation and interaction within and outside of the platform, as well as an improvement in the quality of class discussions. The use of technology enabled the instructors to try new methods in teaching, prompt self-reflection on feedback, and guarantee anonymity in an online platform. In summary, the implementation of innovative peer feedback activities and the use of educational technology allowed the instructors at OsloMET to effectively cultivate 21st-century skills and train conscious, engaged future citizens.
Microsoft's education mission is empowering students and teachers of today to create the world of tomorrow. Innovative technologies, like discussed in this presentation, can allow faculty to become facilitators and students to take ownership of their learning in a more personalized way. We hope participants will take the next step to create the world of tomorrow today with the tools they have in their toolbelt. Each role in the institution can design a map on how they will radically create the space for learning to happen now and in the future.
[1] Hattie, J.A.C., & Timperley, H (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.
[2] Hareli, S. & Hess, U. (2008) “When does feedback about success at school hurt? The role of causal attributions”. Social Psychology of Education, 11, 259-272.
[3] Grajek, S. (November 1, 2021) “Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve”. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/11/top-10-it-issues-2022-the-highe...