Warm Wise Feedback

Warm Wise Feedback: Supporting High Standards, Effort, Ability, & Action

The RSI process is an opportunity to reflect on the frequency, types, and quality of feedback that we’re offering. Effective feedback can be viewed as “assessment for learning” rather than “assessment of learning”.  

What’s the purpose of feedback? 

We regularly discuss outcomes for programs, classes, and assignments. What are your desired outcomes for the feedback you give students? 

  • Building a sense of belonging in the class?
  • Strengthening the student’s sense of themselves as a capable learner?
  • Encouraging the student to keep at it and be persistent? 
  • Correcting content errors and offering clear instructions for improvement?
  • “Passing” the RSI process?
  • Something else? 

Different types of feedback support learner development in different ways. 

Building a sense of belonging

Opportunities to build relationships online are different from face-to-face courses. Giving feedback on an assignment is a precious opening for us to convey to a student that we see them as a human being and that we’re also human.

Strengthening the student’s identify as a capable learner

Validation Theory tells us that when students feel capable of doing academic work, it supports their success, encourages them to keep working, and promotes academic confidence. As they feel more confident in their abilities they may become more excited about the content and engage more fully.

Encouraging the student to keep at it

Recognizing student effort can reinforce their work by describing progress and process rather than only failure or success.

Correcting content errors and offering clear instructions for improvement

Students can exert a lot of effort but if they’ve interpreted the content incorrectly, or they’re using the wrong strategies, their work probably won’t pay off in terms of outcomes mastery. Working hard and continuing to fail can create or add to a feeling of inadequacy as a learner. Kind and clear corrections offer students a path to improve.

What does effective feedback look like?  

High quality feedback includes elements of acknowledgement and encouragement, builds a sense of capability, corrects misconceptions about content, and provides a clear path to mastering the outcomes. The table below shows examples of feedback on a quality continuum.   

  • The column on the left offers examples of fixed mindset responses. These responses imply that the knowledge and ability of the student when they enter your course is set - there’s no path for growth. Many people would find this demoralizing. 
  • The examples under growth mindset demonstrate a sense of encouragement related to effort, but lack direction - there’s no clear path to how the student might achieve mastery of the content. Be sure to check out some of the critique of growth mindset Links to an external site.responses. 
  • The next column offers examples of encouragement (growth mindset) and also a statement communicating your belief that the student can meet the high expectations of your course. 
  • Column four builds on these with the addition of specific, supportive, corrective feedback.
  • When a student does everything correctly, it's tempting to just assign all of the points, maybe toss in a "Good job" and move on. However, even when a student shows mastery we can offer feedback that demonstrates that we see them and the work that they've submitted by explicitly naming some aspect of what they've done right as shown in the final column. 
This table shows examples of feedback

Fixed Mindset

Communicates a belief that the student may not be able to learn the material.

Growth Mindset

Communicates a sense of encouragement without direct instruction on how the student can improve. 

High Standards, Effort, and Ability

Acknowledges that the content can be difficult. Communicates a belief that the student can meet the expectations with continued effort. 

High Standards, Effort, Ability AND Specific Action

Communicates everything from the previous column plus directly addresses misconceptions and provides clear suggestions on how to improve.

Acknowledging What Students are Doing Well

Explicitly names some aspect of mastery that is evident in their work.

I’m not sure this course is a good match for you. Did you talk to an advisor before you signed up? 

You can get better at math if you practice more. Keep at it!

Algebra is challenging for a lot of people. I’m confident that you can be successful with more practice. Keep at it! 

Anisa, you went through each step correctly, except step 3, where there’s a missing sign. This concept can be challenging for a lot of people. I believe that you can do this and more practice will build your ability. Go back and include this sign and see how that changes the final value. You can succeed in this class. Let me know if you’d like to meet and work through it together. 

Anisa, great work on this! You were able to simplify expressions, successfully solve for multiple unknowns, and converted fractions to their lowest terms. You also solved the word problems. You're really mastering algebra.

Writing isn’t everyone’s jam.  Hang in there!  

This is a great start. Keep going.  Review the module readings. You can do it!

I think this may be confusing because we’ve switched from practicing summaries to writing personal responses, which is a different type of essay. I think this is a great start on that but you should review the module readings before the next submission. 

Mauricio, this is a strong draft.  The ideas are explained clearly, which is great. I do think that there are places where the focus can be redirected.  Also, since this is a personal response, I think you can bring in your experience more.  I know that we practiced summary prior to this, so we’re all in the groove of writing summary. But this is a change because we’re writing a different type of essay.  We’re writing a personal response, so there should be more of you in it.  Your personal response, experience, and relationship to the topic.  You include some of these things, but I think you can thread it throughout the essay.  Keep writing.  You can do it!

Mauricio, your personal response is clear and you skillfully weave in your experience and relationship to the topic. 

If you had the math right you may have gotten to the correct answer on this.

I can see that you've been working the practice problems - you'll get this if you keep up the effort.

Some of these concepts can be very challenging. Keep working the practice problems and this will eventually click.

Angel, in the first section, you correctly described Newton's Second Law of motion, but you had difficulty after that. In the second section, I've marked some errors where you had the correct formula, but your math calculations were off. If we can work that out, then you're going to get this. Try working this problem again, slowing down, and rechecking your calculations. I'm also available to walk you through this if you want to drop by my hours. 

Angel, you correctly described Newton's Second Law, calculated the force of a falling object, and compared the force required to accelerate objects with different masses. Your answers show that you've developed a solid understanding of these basic laws of motion.

I see that you need help. The writing center might be able to help you. 

Great work! I see there are some errors, but you can do this if you keep trying.

Nice attempts on your two paragraphs! I see how your topic sentence guides the paragraph. Some of your supporting sentences relate. Your concluding sentence restates the topic clearly. Practice, practice, practice and you will improve! You can do it!

Jack, great efforts on your two paragraphs. I can see how clear your topic sentence guides the paragraph. Some of your supporting sentences relate to the topic. I couldn’t find the conclusion sentence. Can you go back to the online Grammar Basics book on page 46 where there are examples on how to conclude a paragraph? If you need extra help with this, come to my Zoom and we can work this together.”

Jack, your topic sentence guides this document, with related support, and a fully developed conclusion. 

 

To Do

  • Use students name as a simple way to build a sense of belonging
  • Use friendly language - don’t be a robot
  • Explicitly identify what students did right to reinforce learning
  • Add something to build student interest in the topic, either a hint about something coming up or an extension to information outside the course 
  • If everyone did great on an assignment consider sharing this in an announcement to the entire class - be specific about what you saw

Tips on managing the workload

Does this seem like a lot of work? Well, it’s definitely more work than saying “good job” and moving on, but investing this time to think regularly and specifically about each student's performance helps everyone. When students know we care about them they’re more likely to keep up the effort and reach out if they need help. When we're aware of individual strengths and  challenges we can better scaffold student learning, or improve our instruction.  

Of course, as always, we can leverage technology to streamline the process! Some of your friendly Ed Tech team’s favorite techniques are below. And don’t forget that we're always here to help! You don’t need to look far to find us. We are among you.

Don’t go all in on every assignment

First, remember that there are four categories of RSI, and you only have to provide two per week. In other words, you don’t have to do extensive feedback on every assignment. If you do more than one assignment per week, pick the one where the students will get the most value out of your feedback. Or, pick some students on each assignment for feedback. 

Some weeks you might have no assignments, or an assignment doesn’t lend itself to detailed feedback. Just use some other form of RSI to meet the guidelines. 

SpeedGrader is your friend

Use SpeedGrader to provide feedback on assignments and manually graded quiz questions. Use DocViewer to make direct annotations and comments of work submitted in PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. Use the Comments window for...comments! This is also a great place to use the grading hacks described in the next section. Keep in mind that students often need guidance, or reminders, to look for the feedback you post in SpeedGrader. Share the Canvas help page on this: How students can view your comments Links to an external site.. Here's some more information for you on using SpeedGrader.

Reuse your comments

Sometimes we find ourselves leaving the same or similar comments to different students. Our Grading Hacks page describes three tools that can speed this up: SpeedGrader Comment Library, clipboard managers, and text expanders. Remember, if you find yourself leaving the same corrective feedback over and over, this signals you to review the learning opportunities, the instructions, and/or the rubric related to the assignment. 

Using video or audio in SpeedGrader

Sometimes it’s easier to talk through the comments you have about a students’ work. In the tool bar beneath the Comments box you can record a audio or video comment: 

Shows icons used to record audio and video feedback on Canvas comment box

  • To leave an audio comment, click on the speaker button, then click the Record button to start recording.
  • To leave a video comment, click on the video button, then click the Record button. 

 

Video Feedback

For some assignments you might want to record feedback as you show the relevant parts of the students’ work. The video tool built into SpeedGrader Jwon’t help with this, but you can use any tool that records your screen, and upload the result. You could even mount your phone on something, and record your feedback that way. See our document camera hacks.

  • To upload a video, first record the video in your favorite screencasting tool, like Camtasia, Screencast-o-matic, etc. 
  • Then, click on the video button, then click Upload Media at the top of the screen. 

If there's an area where you've noticed a lot of students struggling, consider making a video for the class giving more explanation. Record the video using your favorite recording tool - Panopto works well for this, since it’s easy to share a video with the whole class - then post it in an announcement or in the module. You can then direct students to the video for review. Note that this would fit in the “Providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course” category for RSI, instead of providing feedback. 

Resources and attributions