John,
The word "meaningful" is key. The detailed, individualized, positive feedback you describe leads to the meaningful feedback. Thanks!
Meaningful feedback should be detailed and individualized for each student when completing summative assessments. I also believe criticism is important when necessary, but we must keep positive and use praise whenever possible in our meaningful feedback. And meaningful feedback should show an instructor's support and how important it is to the instructor that we want the student to improve.
Dr. Naomi,
Love the word "authentic." This spans so much of what we have to do when we are providing meaningful feedback.
Thanks for your input.
Hi Dr. Crews,
The most important things to remember when providing student feedback is to ensure it is professional, authentic, timely, constructive, clear, and specific. Moreover, the facilitator’s tone should be encouraging and supportive and come across as constructive rather than being critical. Personally, I like to use the sandwich method, where I start off by highlighting the positives in the students’ assignment, and list areas that need improvement. Finally, the facilitator should end with a positive note and give the student the opportunity to discuss any questions or concerns that they may have about the assignment. I also like to include resources that can help in future assignments if the students’ response was lacking appropriate resources. Great question!
Take care...
Dr. Sealey
Eric ,
Whenever there is meaningful feedback that helps students achieve the learning objectives, that's a great step in the right direction. Keep up the good work.
When developing and delivering meaningful feedback, I try to keep several things in mind:
1) Specific goals. Were the goals of the assignment clearly spelled out? Did the student meet them.
2) Accent the positive. It's very rare that a student completely fails an assignment. Usually, there are some areas they understand and use more than others. Pointing out what they do well makes point 3 easier.
3) Constructively correct. Keep the goal of the assignment in mind. Rather than simply providing a list of the things the student did not do well, explain how meeting more of the specific guidelines can be applied to that the student can eventually master the desired task or knowledge.
Anthony,
You are right. When noting "right/wrong" without additional feedback doesn't help the students learn more that they can carry on to other assignments. I have used Jing to record my feedback verbally while they watch me grade their work. The students have told me this is very helpful as they can hear and see me while I give feedback. They have noted that they then understand why what they did was wrong. Hope this helps.
Dr. Crews,
Meaningful feedback in mathematics courses is a “tricky businessâ€! It is very easy to just mark answers as right/wrong and then move on. However, with this approach, very little is learned that can carry forward to later assignments. I would consider at least four things to remember for meaningful feedback!
First, it must be constructive and “upbeat†to encourage the student to learn more, and actually return to the original assignment and see what was done incorrectly. Very often, students will just look at the grade, and be pleased or angry, and never even read the feedback because they are already working on the next week’s assignment!
Secondly, it should help connect the work better to the objectives of the course, This can be done by adding expository sentences in the feedback which encourage the students to “seek out†the next step … or to think about what a slightly harder (or more complete) assignment might be.
Thirdly, the Professor must avoid becoming a private and personal tutor for each student. If detailed feedback is given, and the student is shown how the problem should have been solved, there is very little learning effected on the part of the students. The reaction in many cases is just “…. that’s nice ….. I wish I had done it that way to get a better grade..â€
Lastly, the Professor must avoid giving answers or solutions to the problems which were incorrect. Many assignments are used over again in later sessions of the course, and these answers often just appear on a “retake†or on some other student’s paper. We use TurnItIn as a constant check on this!
Comments?
Anthony
Rosalind,
Offer "polish" - I like that. We do have to start positive and offer constructive criticism to help students improve. Nice job.
Hello Dr. Crews,
The three most important things to remember (for me) are: 1. Praise the students for their contributions to the assignment/project. 2. Offer polish on where the student can improve on their content information. 3. Provide suggestions where, when and how to improve grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and formatting.
Betsy,
Consistency can be a good thing, but each instructor is different and each course content is different, so some difference in assessment is OK too. Thanks for your input.
I think I will answer this in terms of developing an assessment plan. It seems obvious to have an assessment plan, and I am sure that all instructors use a plan. I believe it is helpful for all instructors to use a similar process for assessment. That way, as students progress through the curriculum, they see a similar process.
I do understand that course content varies and so course assessments vary based on meeting course objectives, however, using similar evaluation processes helps.
As a group, we have developed some tools that we all use, such as the same rubric for grading discussion questions.
If students are familiar with the process they will spend less time learning the process, and more time learning the content.
Suzanne,
You use good words to describe your feedback: positive, substantive, suggestions, improvement. Nice job.
Hi Dr. Crews,
I think the most important things that guide my feedback are:
a) to be as positive as possible because I never want to discourage a student
b) to provide substantive feedback that identifies specific content from their work
c) to provide concrete suggestions for improvement, which is usually possible (perfect essays are rare)
d) to comment on and correct grammatical, punctuation or spelling errors as needed.
Thanks,
Suzanne
jacob ,
I am glad you mentioned connecting the feedback to the learning objectives. This helps students understand why they are doing what they are doing and how to be successful in the course. Nice job.
1. Connecting my feedback with the specific assignment objectives
2. Keep the comments as positive as possible even when a students hasn't meet the objectives
3. Offer up ideas for improvement on all assignments whether they are A or F work
Philip,
Perfect words to describe meaningful feedback - constructive, individualized, and connected to the learning objectives. We all need to keep that in mind. Thanks!
francis,
Connecting the feedback to the objectives of the course as well and making, as you say, your feedback "on point" is key! Thanks!
Dr. Crews,
I believe the 3 most important things to remember when developing meaningful feedback for an assignment is positive but constructive feedback, individualized feedback, and feedback that is connected to the learning objectives.
I want me feedback to be on point in relation to the course. It should be constructive and at the same time you want to encourage a positive learning space. It is necessary fro the feedback to leave the student with a positive view of the course.
