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Feedback to students has been highlighted in the literature as an area where improvements are needed. Students need high quality, prompt feedback, but they also need guidance and tools to help them engage with and learn from that feedback. This case study explores staff and student perceptions of a tool at Sheffield Hallam University which releases electronic feedback to students before allowing them to access their grades. This approach was designed to encourage feedback engagement and connection with future assessments. The methods employed were student interviews and staff questionnaires about their experiences. The data were analysed to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, create recommendations for institutions looking to improve feedback engagement and identify areas for further development.

This paper explores the potential of technology-enabled feedback to improve student learning. "Technology, Feedback, Action!: The impact of learning technology upon students' engagement with their feedback" aimed to evaluate how a range of technical interventions might encourage students to engage with feedback and formulate actions to improve future learning. The study used qualitative methods and worked in partnership with 23 undergraduate students to explore their experiences of receiving different forms of feedback with varying degrees of technical intervention including, but not limited to, electronic feedback with grades withheld; online grade publication; criteria-based feedback; and more traditional feedback methods. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, student participants were encouraged to articulate their experiences of feedback. The online publication of grades and feedback and the adaptive release of grades were found to significantly enhance students' engagement with their feedback. Data were analysed using a thematic approach, and the main themes were used to inform the development of a series of good practice guides. The findings are discussed in the context of current literature.

Learning environment development has been a key part of the Academic Innovation Team's remit for a number of years at Sheffield Hallam University. Beginning with the authors' research into the impact of e-learning on the student experience in 2002--and recognizing the way e-learning influenced students' views of physical spaces--they started to look more closely at the ways in which their students and faculty use on-campus spaces, and at ways in which their environments needed to evolve. By 2007-8 a particular focus of the authors was students' use of informal learning spaces. They set out to develop an understanding of different patterns of informal learning and to examine how they can support these through effective provision of space, resources, and integrated online and face-to-face activities. In early 2008 they were looking for an innovative data-generation method to support their work. Earlier learning environment efforts had seen them use reflective learning activity diaries (document-based), photo diaries, and digital photo stories. They were keen to build on the richness of the data that these methods offered but also to exploit something relevant to today's lifestyle. At the time, one of the authors was using Twitter as part of an established and active network; the other had just started experimenting with it and was on the verge of abandoning it. What if the authors could take Twitter's "What are you doing?" prompt and instead ask "Where are you learning?" Could they get students to send tweets that would offer insights into their learning patterns, activities, and environmental triggers? The authors recruited 15 students to take part in a two-week study. Overall, Twitter exceeded the authors' expectations for this work. Although the depth and style of their participants' tweets varied greatly, most offered them much more than they had hoped for by providing lighthearted but insightful information about how their university, home, and social lives blended together. Above all, the authors were able to take a nonthreatening and decidedly nontraditional activity to engage students in university-wide planning and development. (Contains 4 endnotes.)

The Key to Key Skills Project made portable to other universities an intranet system, developed at Leeds Metropolitan University, to support students' Key Skills. The system was piloted and evaluated in three partner institutions (Sheffield Hallam University, Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Plymouth). The evaluation revealed that how the system was introduced, rather than demographic or course factors, affected students' usage and perceptions of it. (Contains 8 tables and 2 figures.)

The paper is based on research and evaluation carried out in relation to the development of online Key Skills resources (Key Skills Online). Initial research identified guiding principles on which to base the design of computerised self assessments, and the evaluation findings supported these principles. The principles have relevance for the design of computerised diagnostic assessments more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]