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Can Formative Assessment Overtake 360 Feedback?

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The idea of formative assessment is not new and much has been written about this in educational circles, formative assessment if you did not know, is used mainly in the classroom as a tool to provide feedback, assess learning and improve performance, it is also underpinned by a grading criteria which is related to the extent that the individual has met the objectives.

In the classroom teachers’ begin with an overall aim for a specific area of learning, this is then broken down into smaller chunks which are communicated to pupils’ in the form of objectives. These are communicated to the young people and they receive information about what they must do to meet them, young people having received the appropriate teaching and learning experiences are asked to either self-grade the extent to which the objectives have been met or this can be completed by swapping work with peers and having them grade it. The teacher then reviews what the young person has done relative to the objectives, this enables the teacher to appraise performance based on the objectives as well as indicate what changes may be made to improve the young person’s performance. In a classroom context, the teacher can build an overall picture of the topic and discern whether or not subsequent revisions are required at an individual, group or whole class level.

Enter The Relationship with Business

You may already have made your own connections to how this may apply in business- if you haven’t here they are.

In organisational settings we appraise performance, in the main we will look at how individuals have performed over the course of a year, taking on board manager and supervisor inputs and recommendations. Often this is an unsettling experience for employees’, the same could to a degree also be said for the managers’ conducting the appraisals.

What I am suggesting here is that business borrows the formative assessment principles to incorporate them in terms of meeting objectives, the receipt of feedback and the appraisal of performance. Here is what this entails:

The setting & communication of specific, agreed objectives;

The measurement of performance against those objectives by the individual & organisation (e.g. supervisor);

The provision of a daily (digital) reflection space for the individual to review their own performance- tied to a supervisor assessment and reflection on the individuals’ performance;

A transparency caveat (digital) where the individual can view the supervisor feedback and respond;

A live link to HR so that performance issues can be highlighted or discrepancies in feedback evaluated (in digital form which captures data from all employees);

An annual summative assessment of performance (performance appraisal) which is based on all qualitative and quantitative data gathered throughout the year);

The inclusion of a time-out frame where HR, supervisors, management or leadership can discuss all aspects of performance with an individual, group, or team as appropriate.

In this way, we have a continual evaluation of performance, no surprises when it comes to the annual appraisal and an extremely valuable tool which empowers all of those involved to improve. The bottom line is that with this knowledge and capability it will have a significant bearing on workplace performance, experienced autonomy and ownership of outcomes.

This content is immediately actionable in your organisation, within this knowledge and understanding bias is ironed out and removed from the process of evaluation- perhaps now it is time to throw away the 360 degree feedback?

Bear in mind, this does not have to be done digitally, it could also be completed in paper form, especially in settings where there are less than 20 employees. Moreover, there is no requirement for the reflections to be undertaken daily or for each individual objective- this could be done weekly, fortnightly or even monthly. There is also the possibility that you could develop a mobile-enabled application and other input methods to gather the data. For the purposes of equity and really improving, everyone within the organisation should follow the process- even the CEO.

Some Additional Reading:

Inside The Black Box by P. Black and D. Wiliam:

http://weaeducation.typepad.co.uk/files/blackbox-1.pdf

Working Inside The Black Box by P.Black et al.:

http://web.uvic.ca/~gtreloar/Assessment/Periodical%20Items/Working%20Inside%20the%20Black%20Box-Assessment%20for%20Learning%20in%20the%20Classroom.pdf

Assessment for Learning – Beyond The Black Box:

http://assessmentreformgroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/beyond_blackbox.pdf

 

 

 



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