1.3 Assessing or Providing Feedback
Learning Objective: Faculty can name RSI practices that meet federal guidelines and Highline College RSI review criteria.
Introduction
There are four categories of substantive interaction as defined by the federal regulations. On this page, we'll continue looking at each category in detail and sharing examples of how to engage in those practices. We'll also provide links to pages from EdTech's Online Teaching course that describe related pedagogical practices in more detail.
The definition of RSI specifies that each week, interaction with students must include at least two of the following:
- direct instruction / proactively inviting students to connect;
- assessing or providing feedback on a student’s coursework within a reasonable amount of time (as defined in the syllabus);
- providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course; or
- facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course."
Assessing or Providing Feedback
Generally, this means personalized feedback on student assignments. The feedback should clearly tell the students what was successful about their assignment, or how they could improve their grades. Strive for actionable information - what can the student do to improve? Feedback must discuss the work, and indicate how the student can improve on future assignments. “Nice work” is not considered substantive. Auto-graded assignments without personalized feedback do not meet the RSI requirements.
Module 3: Grading and Interaction in EdTech's online teaching course goes into depth with practical suggestions for creating strong feedback. Some highlights for providing feedback include the following:
- Use a detailed rubric and add student-specific comments;
- Give written, recorded, or annotated feedback in Canvas SpeedGrader; and
- Provide resources to help support growth and development. Link to places in the course or other places where the student can continue to learn more and practice the skill or content to strengthen their work.
One important note here is that the feedback should be timely. Students need to know what they need to do to improve their grade while they can still act on it in the course. Highline requires faculty to incorporate a statement in our syllabi about how soon we will return assignments. That sets expectations for them as well as for us. And this is part of the "regular" portion of regular and substantive.
Examples
Example
"You labeled the two axis of the graph, which is helpful in determining patterns and trends in data. You did not yet correctly graph the information on the y -axis. The impact of this is that no trend in the data is visible. Go back to page 23 of the graphing handout and look at examples 3 and 4 and then regraph the data."
“You have shown significant growth over the revisions of this work. Your first draft had more of an opinion statement rather than a thesis statement. The revisions you have done now offer a claim that can be supported by evidence. Our next assignment will focus on counter-claims and how they can strengthen your persuasiveness. After that assignment, you may want to refine your claim even more. Keep up the hard work."
Non-Example
"This is incomplete. Please re-do."
This is not substantive because it does not provide specific information about the skill or content that the student needs to develop or expand on. It is also not great feedback because it is not actionable. There is no information about what the student should do.
"Great work."
This is not substantive because it does not provide specific information about the skill or content that the student understands or was able to demonstrate. It is also not great feedback because it is not actionable. There is no information about what the student should continue to do.
Work that is automatically graded by Canvas or another program (even when the program offers reasons why the answer is correct or incorrect.)
While autograded materials help students to get feedback quickly, the Department of Education does not consider auto-grading to a substantive feedback practice. This can, however, be partnered with individualized feedback.