The 360 Degrees Feedback- a way to excel in your Career- Samar Mohamed

In a previous CTE blog titled Musings on feedback, Gina Passante presented some thoughts about different kinds of feedback such as the feedback she provides to grad students, the feedback she receives on her research presentations and the feedback that students provide to instructors in the course evaluations. All these feedback formats are useful but they are all one directional and may lead to misinterpretation and defensiveness even with critisizm meant to be constructive .
Gina’s blog posting reminded me of a session that I enjoyed during the 2011 University of Waterloo Staff Conference. The title of the session was “Excel in your Career” and was facilitated by Liz Koblyk (Centre for Career Action) . During this session Liz talked about four main keys to excel in our careers which are: Emotional Intelligence, Feedback, Connectedness and Accountability.
While talking about feedback, Liz suggested that we better acquire feedback outside of the performance appraisal process and from a range of people. Liz proposed some interesting ideas that would make the feedback process among peers more fruitful, and she suggested that we:

  • Request feedback often.
  • Ask carefully about what to “start –stop –continue” doing.
  • Thank without defending.
  • Act on feedback.
  • Ask about our progress regarding the provided feedback [1].

Liz also highlighted some challenges for the feedback process such as:

  • If the work is good; there is no need for feedback.
  • Feedback may hurt and improvement may be tough to accomplish.

Liz talked briefly about an interesting method that merges both the recommendations of getting feedback and a solution to it’s challenges, which is the 3600 feedback method.

What is 360 degrees feedback?

The 360 degrees feedback method is a multi-rater technique that is used to gather and process anonymous feedback on individuals from different stakeholders such as peers, supervisors, other supervisors, partners, clients, and one’s self; and then feeding back the results to the recipients [1]. Typically, 3600 reviews are conducted by Human Resources departments for upper level staff, but anyone can conduct their own version of a 3600 feedback.

What are the stages of the 360 degrees feedback?

A typical 360 degrees process that would focus on self awareness and development involves different stages or questions to be answered:

1-   What is the purpose of the feedback process?
The two main reasons of performing this kind of feedback process are employee development and performance evaluation. In this blog my main focus is on employees’ development.

2-   What is the suggested tool to perform the feedback?
A typical tool consists of questionnaires that are filled out by different stakeholders (raters). For the purpose of this blog, I would point out that there are some free 360 degrees tools that are available online.

3-   Who are the stakeholders (raters)?
Typically the feedback recipient chooses approximately ten raters who are mainly: manager, other manager, self, subordinates, peers, partners, internal clients and external customers.

4-   Questionnaire distribution
I suggest that one inspects the available online tools and selects the tool that best fits one’s needs. He/she would send out the link of this questionnaire to the raters and assure them that the questionnaire is voluntarily and anonymous.

5-   Thanking the raters for their feedback.

What are the advantages of the 360 degrees feedback [1]:

1-   It can build more effective work relationships, increase one’s opportunity to evolve, reveal and resolve conflicts and show respect for raters’  opinions. This will function to  build better teams and detect barriers to success.
2-   The 3600 feedback data will be resonably valid since it comes from diverse sources.
3-   The recipient’s self awareness will increase by identifying and addressing one’s weaknesses and highlighting strengths that one can build upon. This is an important step in the career development process.
4-   The use of the 3600 feedback method allows peers/co-workers to praise or criticise their colleagues anonymously.

I really liked the idea of 3600 feedback and intend to adopt it in order to progress in my career. I also encourage people to learn more about the process and to try it out.

References

1-   Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”, Hyperion; ISBN: 1401301304 ,2007

2-   Alma M. McCarthy and Thomas N. Garavan, “Understanding 3600 feedback”, Journal of European Industrial Training, 2001, pages 5-32.

Conflict – Veronica Brown

 

“What was the most significant learning you have experienced or witnessed in your lifetime?”

That was a question posed yesterday by Ashlee Cunsolo Willox and Dale Lackeyram during their presentation at the Teaching & Learning Innovations conference at the University of Guelph. In pairs, we chatted away about some significant learning we had experienced and, as teachers, what we had witnessed. Then, we had a large group discussion about these experiences.

Before I continue, you are probably wondering what that question has to do with conflict. I wondered that, too, as their presentation was entitled, “You’re Stuck with Them: Now What? Managing and Maintaining Conflict in Group Settings”.

After participants shared some of the learning they had experienced or witnessed, Ashlee and Dale drew our attention to the role conflict had played in these experiences. The level had varied; some were intense, emotional events while others’ conflict was intrapersonal as they questioned themselves, their convictions, and their perception.

BirdWallpaper.com conflict birds image

I really enjoyed their presentation, which then focused on the value of conflict and its role in group work. For me, the most important take-away was a reminder of how conflict can be a powerful catalyst for change. I witnessed its transformative power a few weeks ago at the Teaching Excellence Academy (TEA), a four-day workshop in which participants re-design a single course. At the TEA, participants spent four days wrestling with themselves. What did they really want their students to get from this course? Why were they teaching it a certain way? How would they address external variables over which they had little control? Why had they come to the TEA and what were they trying to accomplish? It is an intense period of reflection.

Conflict, of course, also has as much potential to destroy as to transform. How, then, do we support our students as they deal with the conflict associated with their learning? In our professional lives, how do we support our colleagues as they face new challenges? How do we support ourselves? These are questions that I am wrestling with at the moment.

I was grateful to be reminded that conflict, rather than something to be avoided, can be productive and meaningful.

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Why don’t you come inside and get some stale air? – Michael Pyne

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on what exactly makes a great engineer. Or, better yet, what traits and skills allow top engineering students to excel? I’m sure we would all agree that the best engineers are superb problem solvers, creative thinkers, innovators, and are as sharp as they come. But what I want to know is how did they acquire these traits? Although I like to think I possess many of these qualities, I am merely a half engineer at best. Perhaps a quasi-engineer or pseudo-engineer is more fitting. You see, I completed a BSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo as a PhD student. Thus, my “expertise” lies somewhere awkwardly between applied molecular biology and chemical engineering.

While spending most of my waking hours in the laboratory with a mixture of talented undergraduate and graduate engineers, I have come to observe an underlying commonality between such students. What I am referring to is a hobby that many true engineers have grown up with. Many of them still actively take part in this hobby as adults. What I am referring to may frustrate or annoy some parents. What I am referring to, of course, are video games.

Despite the stigma that has plagued video games since the inception of Pong and Pac-Man, I am confident that they have helped me acquire important problem-solving, cooperation, strategy, and teamwork skills, in addition to a keen eye for detail; all things that are ever so important in a molecular biology laboratory, not to mention dozens of other disciplines. At UW, I continually observe much brighter engineers than myself who, as I am usually quick to find out, were also much bigger gamers than me growing up. Perhaps gamers are so drawn to engineering because they love challenges and are able to treat real-world problems not unlike the problems they solved in games as kids. I apologize if I am generalizing, as I am certainly not suggesting that to be a great engineer you must have clocked thousands of hours gaming as a teenager. I am also not implying that students who were non-gamers growing up will have trouble succeeding in engineering as adults. Indeed, I know many brilliant engineers who have never had much interest in video games and have likely acquired many important skills from a range of other activities.

Video games have always received a bad rap, particularly from parents who claim that they contaminate young minds, distract youth from more nourishing activities, and lead to aggressive behaviour. I think we have all been victims of the indefensible “Why don’t you go outside and get some fresh air?” argument. By the way, I never understood what parents meant when they said that. Was my Super Nintendo emitting some highly toxic gases which prevented me from playing beyond 2 or 3 hours at a time? Does gaming contaminate the air we breathe, thus requiring excessive ventilation? As a kid, I found out that this was not true – opening all the windows in the house, setting up an elaborate electric fan network, and even hooking up my system to an electrical outlet in my backyard on a sunny summer day still did not allow me to extend my playing time. But was I contaminating my young mind? Did I waste my youth playing video games when I could have been doing more productive things? Hardly.

Just as I am a quasi-engineer, I am also a quasi-gamer. As a child, my gaming interests typically did not venture beyond the realm of Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong; hardly games for parents to lose sleep over. However, these games were jam-packed with puzzles, obstacles, and a slew of problems just waiting for my young and developing mind to solve. While playing video games, I was able to explore, to discover, to figure things out for myself, all at my own pace. I was able to feel an immense sense of accomplishment, whether it was through beating a challenging level or an entire game that I had spent a great deal of time mastering. And these joys were often shared. My brother and I would play games together for hours on end, sharing, taking turns, and figuring things out together. Or I would play with a couple of friends and we would work as a team and collaborate. My love for video games was also coupled to an equal love for jigsaw puzzles and number and math games of all shapes and kinds. So it is no surprise to me that, come high school, I developed a strong interest in chemistry and biology, or more specifically, cells, DNA, and proteins. As a graduate student, the genetic engineering experiments I conduct in the lab can be thought of as puzzles in which I cut DNA into thousands of pieces and paste them back together to form new recombinant molecules. I feel that I was able to acquire so many important skills from video games that have helped me immensely as an undergraduate and graduate student, and also as a developing scientist and engineer.

Although many view video games as time wasters, even more worrisome to parents is the violent nature and mature content of many modern games. This is where my pro-video game stance crumbles. I will not deny that any game that is “rated M for Mature” is not suitable for anyone under 18. I will also not deny that there is an unnecessary amount of violence, sexual content, and gore in video games these days. Although Mario games continue to do well commercially, more violent games such as World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto, and Call of Duty have created much worse dilemmas for new parents than my parents likely ever faced. As my favourite comedian, Demetri Martin, puts it, “I like video games, but they’re very violent. I want to design a video game in which you have to take care of all the people who have been shot in the other games. ‘Hey man, what are you playing?’ ‘Super Busy Hospital 2. Please leave me alone. I’m performing surgery on a man that was shot in the head 57 times.’” Jokes aside, I believe that video games have done immensely more good than harm, so long as they are regulated and screened by parents. Also, as with most things in life moderation and variety are paramount. So if you find your children spending excessive time outdoors this summer why don’t you have them come inside and get some stale air?

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Publishing SoTL Work in Unusual Places – Jane Holbrook

Although it’s tempting to blog about the Royal Wedding this morning (yes, I did get up and rush down the street to watch the event with a group of “girls” , young and old), I’m instead going to carry out  some advice from the recent Opportunities and New Directions Conference, which was to share our research in unusual ways – this is pretty unusual for me  so here goes ….

I displayed my poster “What drives students’ preferences for face-to-face, online or blended courses?” at this event on Wednesday and had some good conversations with other participants. The poster describes some student feedback that was gathered through an end of term questionnaire that I was using to help instructors evaluate activities in five blended courses last fall. The students who responded to the questionnaire were all on campus, fulltime students in Soc 101, Earth 235, Psych 340, Cive 292 and Enve 292. The students were primarily Arts, Science and Engineering students in 1st, 2nd and  3rd year, aged 23 and under.  They were asked to choose which type of course they preferred: face-to-face courses with no online activities; fully online courses with no face-to-face activities; courses that have both online and face-to-face activities; or if their preference depends on the discipline of the course being taken; or on the level of the course being taken. They were asked to explain their choice.

The responses fell into three main categories with about 36% choosing courses that have both online and face-to-face activities, 32% choosing that their preference depends on the discipline of the course being taken and 26% choosing face-to-face courses with no online activities, (n=298). What were their reasons for these choices and what can we learn from their responses?

Those who chose courses with both online and face-to-face activities focussed on the usefulness of the online tools and the flexibility of time and pace of learning (including repeatability of online lectures) and how this has a positive impact on their learning. Half of them articulated how both environments contribute to their learning in some way, but the face-to-face environment was singled out as the preferred environment for asking questions because the answers are immediate.

Those whose preference was dependent on the discipline of the course being taken commented that they prefer face-to-face courses in their own discipline, but that online elements or online courses are useful in disciplines other than their own. Fifty percent commented that they prefer to learn mathematics in a face-to-face environment. A few respondents said that difficult concepts in their own field were better learned online through simulations.

The face-to-face course advocates communicated that, for them, the instructor’s presence in the classroom is important and they want to be in the classroom while the instructor presents concepts and solves problems, answers their questions, emphasises important concepts and communicates information about assessments. They believe that being with the instructor increases their understanding and retention of concepts. They also appreciate the ease of social interactions and communication with the instructor and peers in the classroom. Their comments clearly conveyed that asking questions and getting answers quickly is key for them. Another common theme was that these students perceive that the online environment has a negative impact on their motivation to learn and on their attention span.

This is by no means  a “rigorous” research project,  it’s more of a fishing expedition for next questions. This feedback could be the springboard for formulating interesting research questions. For instance, what is the optimal mix of face-to-face, blended and fully online courses in undergraduate programs? Which courses in a program might be most effectively developed as blended or fully online courses? How can we help students develop online learning skills;  skills they will surely need during co-op terms, in graduate school, or for life-long learning in their professional and private  lives?  What are the most effective ways to design online and blended courses that provide the modelling of conceptual thinking and problem solving for students who are at the “dualistic thinking” stage of development? How do synchronous question and answer opportunities, both in the face-to-face classroom and online, impact learning?  What are the perceived barriers to learning Math online;  do we need to design online math-based courses differently?

Some would argue that students don’t know “what’s good for them” or what’s best for their learning,  but I think that we do need to understand their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of different learning environments and to use this information to improve learning designs and help them become effective and engaged learners in a variety of learning environments.

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Musings on feedback — Gina Passante

 

As a Graduate Instructional Developer at the CTE I spend a lot of my time observing graduate students teaching and providing them with feedback.  I have also recently set up a peer feedback system for research presentations at the Institute for Quantum Computing (where I do my graduate work).  Needless to say, I’ve been giving other people feedback on their teaching quite a lot recently.  But the other day I was the one receiving feedback on my research presentation.  I was nervous, and quite surprised by it.  I’m confident about my presentation abilities, and I know very well that feedback is constructive, and that everyone can improve, but none of this seemed to matter.  It reminded me of how terrible I feel when I get bad student evaluations (even one bad comment out of 100 students is enough to temporarily crush my spirits).

Now, I can understand why student evaluations are often upsetting (many students don’t know how to give constructive feedback, they sometimes pick on aspects of your personality, …), but why was I so scared to receive constructive feedback from my peers?  Indeed, this fear was completely unfounded as the feedback I received was not the least bit scary – but the fear reminded me of something very important: many people get very defensive when they receive constructive criticism.   For example, my mom gets defensive when I suggest a different ingredient into a familiar recipe, as does my partner when I suggest he drive a little further from the car in front of us, and it happens every once and a while when I give feedback on teaching or a presentation or an assignment.  I know that there are things I can do to help prevent this response from my end, and as luck would have it, a few days after these thoughts crossed my mind, a helpful post was written on the Faculty Focus blog on how to give students better feedback.  Although the post written with grading assignments in mind, the advice can be applied in a much broader context.  I suggest you take a look: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/giving-students-more-effective-feedback/)

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Maryellen Weimer at 2011 Presidents’ Colloquium – Trevor Holmes

Annually, Waterloo’s two presidents (the President, and the Faculty Association President) host a special guest on campus to talk about teaching and learning. These guests are recognized specialists in some branch or another of higher education. This year we are honoured to hear from Maryellen Weimer, whom I’ve hosted in other settings and with whom I’ve been lucky enough to spend time at teaching conferences. Dr. Weimer is the long-time editor of the Teaching Professor Newsletter, and has also published books about pedagogical scholarship, learner-centered teaching, and techniques for instructional improvement. She manages both to be generously humane and caustically funny (sometimes in the same breath). Last time we spoke, I recall a debate erupting about why she rejected the “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (SoTL) label in favour of “pedagogical scholarship”; and yet she has been invited to speak at a SoTL conference about SoTL work. I’ll be very curious to hear how she frames this more defined field of study now that its name and practices have become somewhat more solidified by way of journals, professional organisations, and books.

Can Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Actually Improve my Teaching?
Presidents’ Colloquium: Opening Keynote: Dr. Maryellen Weimer

“Books, journals, and articles on teaching and learning date back to the early 1900s – some even before that. All these materials have one thing in common: few educators read them. What can be learned from this literature? Is research a useful resource faculty need for self-improvement as teachers? Are fellow teachers the ones best suited to research and write about teaching and learning? How is this pedagogical scholarship alike and different from discipline-based research? In this keynote, Maryellen Weimer explores answers to these questions. Whether engaging in a thoughtful reflection of classroom experience or an empirical endeavour that answers a pragmatic question, post-secondary teachers can use the scholarship of colleagues not only to enlarge their understanding of teaching and learning, but also to increase their effectiveness in the classroom. Illustrative examples will offer a range of new ideas, interesting findings, and provocative points to consider.”

Please join us for the Presidents’ Colloquium April 27 2011 in Hagey Hall 1101 (the new wing of Hagey). No registration required for this special keynote event (a free and open part of the longer Opportunities and New Directions Conference, for which registration is required — we can still take a few more people for OND if you are interested!).

Routledge Education Journals Free for April… – – Trevor Holmes

Great news for those who are intrigued by the idea of academic journals on teaching and learning in higher education: for the entire month of April, Taylor and Francis has made available for free all its Routledge holdings related to education.

Although you will of course find journals listed that are aimed at early years, elementary, and secondary education, there are also journals related to higher education on the list. Some journals will be discipline-specific; others, generic.

The text from their email alert::

“EDUCATION FREE FOR ALL… Free online access to 228 education research journals!”

“Routledge is delighted to announce that free online access is available NOW through Education Free for All. Throughout April 2011, Education Free For All gives you free access to all our top quality education research journals. This includes content from the entire archive of each journal, as well as the most recent articles.”

see www.educationarena.com/effa

 

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.