Sunday, March 8, 2015

Providing meaningful feedback - at a distance . . .

"The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." - Sydney Harris


Part of teaching, whether face-to-face or at a distance, concerns feedback, and instructors have a variety of opportunities to provide feedback.

Let's explore providing effective feedback on assignments...at a distance.

I am one of those instructors who feels that if an assignment is worth assigning, worth the student taking his or her time to complete, then it is worth my time to provide effective feedback, feedback that helps the student grow and learn, perhaps changing their behaviors and hopefully applying my comments to future work.

Why do we provide feedback?
Letting students know what they are doing well can encourage students and help build their confidence. Feedback can also help students diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, keeping them on track to meet course and unit objectives. Ideally, students take the feedback we offer use it to improve future performance. From a practical viewpoint, I am not sure that happens very often. Feedback should be constructive, specific, and lean, focusing on something a student can change about his or her work...but also focusing on the strengths - what is good about that work we want to help them strengthen.

Face-to-face classes provide many opportunities for feedback, ranging from in-class discussion to students dropping by during office hours. Online courses offer different opportunities for feedback: email, instant messages, google hangouts, discussion forums, blogs, video-conferences......and the ever present...paper.

To me, feedback is even more important in an online course where students can feel isolated and unsure of themselves and their work without regular contact and feedback. Writing a paper - any paper - is a personal venture, one where the student tries to give voice to his or her ideas on a specific topic, pulling from the resources to support their voice. Continual, immediate, and detailed feedback is crucial to student success (Gaytan & McEwen, 2010).  In addition, feedback must be personalized to the student and to the assignment.  Two students submitting the same assignment deserve feedback tailored to them, to their needs, and to the assignment. Rubrics are great to guide a student when preparing an assignment, and serve as a great starting point for faculty when beginning the feedback process, but individualization is important

How do we provide feedback?
Feedback can be provided by peers and instructor, by phone, written, orally, video, face-to-face ...or any combination of these. Rubrics can be used individually or combined with several of these items.


When do we provide feedback?
This one is tricky. Not every assignment needs to be graded, but feedback does not necessarily include grading.  Feedback does need to be provided in a timely manner and should explore both positives and negatives of the task, given early enough for the student to benefit when completing subsequent tasks.

My journey with providing feedback

I have begun combining feedback techniques: written with video ... using several layers of feedback.

Huh?

Perhaps I should provide a wee bit of my feedback/grading history.

Originally I taught English courses and writing, and even though my curricular assignments have changed over the years, I often find myself still teaching writing...or some component of writing.  One of the constant concerns - and I do not believe this one has been solved yet - is that students seldom carry over learning from one course to another - with regards to writing. I would start with college freshmen who could not form cohesive paragraphs and by the end of a course they not only wrote well-developed paragraphs, but they could write the vestigial 5-paragraph essay, well-developed and with few punctuation errors. Second semester the same students signed up for part 2 of the course, and we were back at the beginning!

I knew they knew better!

THEY knew they knew better!

hmmmmm... obviously what I thought was working wasn't....  so... time for a change.... All English courses at that institution were organized the same way, using a multiple draft approach with multiple revisions and per feedback as well as instructor feedback.  Students left those classes well prepared to write well.

Yet, they didn't.

It was as though they had never ever written a paper, had never taken an English course.... everything was forgotten.

The issue was one of transfer of knowledge.  Students had a difficult time transferring what they learned in one course to another. A history faculty member and I hit upon a plan: we would co-teach an American history course that required formal papers. He taught the history, and together we reviewed the paper requirements, and we applied the revision/multiple draft approach that all English faculty used....   Students would receive two grades on their paper - one in history on the content, and one from me on the writing. Each paper was graded twice, and many earned A/D or A/C...great history content, not-so-great on the writing skills.  So I asked them why. Their response: "It was a history class.  Writing doesn't matter in a history class."

I have yet to solve this issue because students still do not often take the learning with them, not the writing learning..... so .... I still play with feedback methods, hoping to eventually hit upon the right combination

My current approach

Time to return to where I was: I have begun combining feedback techniques: written with video ... using several layers of feedback, breaking the feedback down into chunks. Snagit and Camtasia help me create this feedback, referred to as screencasting (Seror, 2012).


Let's suppose I have a paper/written assignment to grade.

          Step 1:  I read the paper from beginning to end, making no marks, just  to gain a sense of the submission...and to decide where to go from there.

          Step 2: Then I begin making comments on the paper.  Currently, I pull the paper up directly in the gradebook in CANVAS and insert comments there..but there is more to it than this..I note patterns of errors. Writing errors tend to fall into groups, creating a pattern of errors. A person may have trouble, for example, with commas, and an instructor looking carefully at those comma errors will notice a pattern of the same type of mistake being made repeatedly. When looked at individually, one error could be made  a dozen times, looking overwhelming to the student. Once a student understands he or she  really only made ONE error, not 20, the student is in a better place to learn how to correct that one error. So the first time that error is made, I highlight it in a specific color,  and insert a comment giving the name of the error and a url reference. The next time I see that error, I highlight it again in the same color. (More to come!) I use other tools provided through CANVAS - comments, text, and strikeout.  As I reach other errors - perhaps a sentence structure or clarity issue - I circle or highlight them, making a brief notation in the comment box.

         Step 3: Once I have done this with the entire paper, I pull up the video capture function in SnagIt. Jing would also work although videos are limited to 5 minutes..  This feature allows me to do a video capture of the screen as I talk through the feedback process, making comments and explaining comments in more detail - holding a conversation of sorts (albeit one-sided) ....much like having students look over my shoulder as I grade. Students receive a pdf of their annotated paper and a copy of their video file.

Following is an excerpt from one of my feedback videos:




I love the conversation approach to providing feedback.  I feel as though I can be more "me" with my students which is a very important component is developing presence.  I need to confess that I am somewhat stodgy in my approach, despite my use of technology. I avoid criticizing the student and focus instead on the work itself. Kudos ARE the student ("You did a great job with...").  Improvement-based feedback on items that need strengthening or changing always refer to the item, NOT the student ("This paragraph needs to be developed more fully" or "This sentence is unclear"). I keep kudos personal, yet the changes to be made are not personal.  After all, I am giving feedback on the paper, not on the student. Semantics?  Perhaps, but it is something with which I am comfortable. I also tend to layer the feedback moving from positive to negative and back to positive...repeatedly.


This video capture method works with grading video presentations as well.  I watch part of a presentation while having the video capture turned on, then pause and reflect upon what I just heard.

Does this work better than other methods of provding feedback?

I have no idea.

Students seem to like it, though, and send me messages telling me they appreciate the time I spent with their papers and that they felt as though I really read them. they also mention enjoying the personalization of the feedback as though we were chatting about the paper. some have even responded with an audio file :-) Research suggests adult students are more likely to pay attention to feedback when instructors demonstrate they have carefully considered the students' ideas on paper, finding it more helpful when instructors combine encouraging comments with specific comments about their written work (Eyres, et al., 2001). Students also prefer instructors to provide specific guidance (Treglia, 2009). When I review earlier papers, I realize that, in many cases, I am not making the same comment, so something seems to be clicking...

I guess time will tell....

References

Eyres, S. J., Hatch, D. H., Turner, S. B., & West, M. (2001). Doctoral students' responses to writing critique: Messages for teachers. Journal of Nursing Education, 40(4), 149-155.  

Gaytan, G., & McEwen, B. C. (2010). Effective online instructional and assessment strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 117-132.

Seror, J. (2012). In the classroom: Show me! Enhanced feedback through screencasting technology.    TESL Canada Journal, 30(1), 104-111.

Treglia, M. O. (2009) . Teacher-written commentary in college writing composition: How does it impact student revisions? Composition Studies, (37)(1), 67-86.


"Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." - Rollo May

5 comments:

  1. Molly,
    As always, this is a thoughtful and well-written post. I enjoyed reading about your evolution of feedback. I commend you for the time and energy you invest in providing individualized video and audio feedback for students. I provide this type of feedback in my undergraduate online courses, because I suppose I feel like those students need to see my face and hear my voice more. However, I need to take the time to provide this type of feedback in my graduate courses as well. One thing I started doing last semester (after learning about the approach from NCVPS) is keeping a feedback log for each course. I keep a copy of each piece of feedback I provide to each student, and I send the feedback log to each student at the end of the semester. Since I started using this approach, I have used less audio and video feedback than in the past. I haven't found a way to incorporate video and audio feedback seamlessly into the feedback log format I'm using. This means I probably need to change the format of the feedback log so I can include video and audio feedback. Hmmmmm

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  2. thanks,Jayme, for your kind words. Grading and feedback are so important, yet so very difficult to do..at least to do well, and feedback doe not always include grading....

    tell me more about the feedback log...

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  3. Molly,

    This is such a wonderful and meaningful post. For one, it will serve as a great guideline for proper student feedback. You have provided us with very specific examples that have already been tested. The fact that you explain what worked and what needed to be re-tuned, makes me have a strong sense of confidence, while looking to implement your examples of success.

    I believe that your approach reaches each learning style (visual, auditory and kinesthetic). Your three step process can be applied to any subjects. I would love to utilize this technique with math, chemistry or physics assignments. Providing this type of feedback to students in these subjects would entice them to spend more time showing their work.

    I also agree strongly that feedback is more important in an online course environment. It is really cool to have so many tools to provide that necessary and critical feedback. Thanks again for such a great post that serves as a great example to us newbies.

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  4. Molly,

    I really appreciate the way you shared your personal journey of giving feedback to your students. It is commendable that your students' feelings are in the forefront of your process in sharing feedback with them. Your description of feedback as "layers" intrigues me. Written and visual feedback fused as one is something that I would like to adopt in my own online learning realm. This is something I would like to incorporate in my Special Education class as well.

    Last semester for an assignment, I created a short video of a student's work that included my voice giving feedback. He not only enjoyed the feedback, but it seemed to be meaningful to him. In the video for my student, I used the praise, constructive criticism, and praise method. I need to make the time to do more meaningful feedback with my current students.

    While researching articles that relate to your blog post, I found an article titled, 23 Tools to Make Your Feedback Meaningful (http://firstround.com/review/23-Tools-to-Make-Feedback-Meaningful/). Even though this article was written as a guide for the business sector, the information in this article parallels some of your practices in giving feedback.

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  5. Molly,

    I enjoyed reading about your approach to feedback. I found the feedback that you gave me on my interview assignment very helpful - so much so that I went back and listened to it again before I began writing my autobiography paper. I wouldn't want to make the same mistake twice. You are so positive and enthusiastic in your comments that the student can't help but learn. I am curious if you are able to maintain that positive energy by the time you get to the 6th poorly written paper in a row or if you have to take breaks to recharge. What you do seems like a very time intensive process. How much time has the video response added to the amount of time that you spend grading assignments?

    I decided to respond to your blog when my blogger never posted because I am struggling with the best approach to give feedback to my online students. When we do Access, each of the assignments builds on the previous assignment, so it is important that the students look at my feedback and make necessary adjustments before they move on. There is no writing involved on the part of the student – these are skills mastery type assignments -- so there is typically not a lot of feedback required, but if there is a problem I tend to give very thorough written instructions on what they need to do to fix it. Many of the students never look at my feedback, then struggle with the next assignment because of this. I have tried video feedback on a few occasions, but should probably do more of it.

    I think that the most difficult aspect of providing feedback, especially for large assignments is the amount of time that is put into grading and giving feedback. I have graded assignments where I felt like I put more time into providing them feedback on the assignment than the student put into creating it. As a teacher, I never mind doing it – giving feedback is teaching and that is certainly a big part of the job, but it can be frustrating putting a lot of time and effort into giving feedback to someone who never bothers to look at it. I wonder if making the student provide feedback to the feedback would be a useful assignment…

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