Additional Resource - Providing Strong Feedback

Use of this page

This is page 3.5 of the Online Teaching Course that has been pasted here for you as additional information. Providing great feedback is an important skill that supports students in their success in your course. The stronger the feedback, the more likely students are to be able to apply it and make growth. Spending time developing your feedback style is useful as a professional practice. This page is intended as a support in that growth.

Learning Objective: Faculty can craft effective and affirming feedback.

Theory

Feedback is not the same thing as grades. Feedback is information that helps someone to continue to grow and develop their understanding. Feedback should name specific features and actionable steps that students can use. This could be highlighting something effective a student did and naming why it was effective or offering suggestions for what students can do to improve on the skill.

Feedback can help build a sense of belonging in a class or discipline, strengthen a student's self-concept, encourage a student to keep going and persist, correct content and skill misconceptions. Or, feedback can do the opposite and undermine a student's development.

The best feedback

is specific
is tied to a criteria that is named
explains the impact of the decision
is actionable [names specific ways to improve the work]

"Good job" or "You did not find relevant evidence. Try again" are not helpful feedback.

"You have three pieces of information that directly tie to the claim and you explain them both in terms of what the author means and its impact on your understanding of the story. The impact of this is that as a reader, I understand how those elements of the story further the theme of self-reliance."

"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."

Both of those pieces of feedback are actionable, clear, and helpful. Students can use them without you there to either continue doing their great work or make changes in their work.

Resources

Like most things, feedback is best in moderation. Blasting a student with 500 things to fix is not going to allow them time to internalize the feedback and make substantive changes. [This is why smaller assignments focused on specific elements are great and why tying everything to the rubric is also super helpful and important. It can limit the scope of the feedback to something manageable.]

There is a lot of research about strengths-based feedback and why starting from what students did well is important. You should aim to have a balance of feedback, rather than only focusing on the things that need improvement.

Effective feedback brings together the belief that students are capable of success, that there is effort involved in attaining success, and provides clear direction for how to continue or improve. Without those concrete and clear steps, the feedback is not actionable and students are not able to make progress on the skill or content you are working on.

Feedback like "Some of these concepts can be very challenging. Keep working the practice problems and this will eventually click" does not give the student any direction on how to get better. They know they did not meet the standard, but how can they improve? What should they work on? Where can they access information to get better at this?

Examples of Strong Feedback

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. 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 are showing a strong understanding of algebra.

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!

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.

Nice attempts on your two paragraphs! I see how your topic sentence guides the paragraph. Some of your supporting sentences relate. Please review the resource called "adding evidence to the paragraphs" and revise paragraph two to include more information. You have a good foundation, but the connection between the evidence and claim needs to be strengthened.

Canvas allows you to leave feedback in multiple places.

You can leave feedback as a summary comment in Speedgrader (video). Links to an external site.
You can leave feedback in each rubric category in the rubric as you read the assignment.
You can annotate and leave feedback Links to an external site. (similar to comments and suggestions in a google doc) on the actual student work in Speedgrader.

Additionally, you can save some time and energy by creating comments you will use multiple times. You can make a google doc with the comments and just cut and paste, or you can use a clipboard manager or text expander to save time. Links to an external site.

Canvas allows you to do audio and video feedback, which might be quicker feedback at times. It can also allow you to make a clip (such as a how-to for a process) and then attach that video as feedback to all students who need that support. This can be incredibly helpful in an online course where you do not have the same level of access to clarify misconceptions as you would in a face-to-face or hybrid course. Many online instructors report that audio or video feedback feels more personal and helps to create more class community.

Also mentioned in the quiz section, Canvas allows you to add feedback to quizzes (so when students select the correct or incorrect answer they can see feedback about why that is so).

In an online course, feedback is a primary connection point between you and the student. The more your feedback is personalized (using the students naming, naming something they are doing well, naming a progression over time [like if they were not as adept at the skill earlier in the course but now they are stronger at it, mention that!], and that draws on the rubric criteria) really helps students to grow in course and to feel like a real person is really invested in their work. Sending your work off into the ether and then at the end of the course having a number is not great for skill development or connection and community.

Practice

This practice assignment uses an outside program called H5P. If you are having trouble with the page loading, check to ensure you have allowed pop-ups. If you are still having trouble, reach out to EdTech for support.