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A Guide to Deploying Comparison Activities to Support Student Learning

Developed by Dr Martin Fellenz, Dr Mairead Brady & Michelle MacMahon from the Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Feedback is a critical area in higher education and we recognise that resource constraints and other issues often limit our ability as educators to increase feedback quality, quantity and adequacy to the level we would like to achieve. In this guide we provide some basic background on feedback and comparison and describe approaches for deploying comparison to support student learning. We showcase how to operationalise the deployment of comparison within a number of practice cases in different disciplines and across a range HE settings to both share experiences from both educators and students and to also provide some best practice examples.

This guide provides an introduction to and directions for how to implement and use comparison activities to support student learning. It reflects the understanding of learning in higher education(HE) as a process in which learners play a central and active role in self-regulating and self-directing their own learning. These comparison techniques, designed by educators are focused on encouraging students to recognise and embrace their agency for learning and provides new and innovative ways for them to actively recast themselves as the provider of much of their own learning.

A Guide to Deploying Comparison Activities to Support Student Learning (PDF 3,848 KB)