Looking at Feedback Strategies on Written Work

This next session from the University of Wyoming Technology Bootcamp is on feedback strategies for written work presented by Rick Fisher, Meg Van Baalen-Wood, Tricia Giovacco-Johnson, and Kaijsa Calkins.

This session will explore approaches to responding to written work and other individual and collaborative assignments. The panel will talk through and illustrate their audio (podcasting), video (Camtasia/Jing), and written (MS Word) forms of feedback to students. We will also discuss our efforts to use comments as part of a larger feedback loop to promote ongoing student learning.

Giving Feedback With Word Comments

Meg is demonstrating adding comments to a document. She uses critical questions to analyze student work rather than act as an editor. She discussed the Track Changes feature in MS Word and the limitations. Instead, she prefers the commenting feature. She ties her comments to a grading rubric. Meg maintains a bank of comments that she reuses when responding to students. She uses color to call attention to specific parts of a document by highlighting. When starting a course, she instructs students on how to read her comments. Meg now takes in all assignments electronically.

Using color to identify needed changes

Rick highlights text both online and in face-to-face classrooms. He uses color coding to show students where they can improve their writing. He provides a color key so students can identify the changes they need to make. In a rubric, he also employs colors such as stoplight colors. Rick does not specifically identify the change but self-identifies writing issues. Rick also showed the Compare feature in MS Word. Compare allows you to show two documents side by side to see the differences between them . This allows an instructor to see where students are making changes from one version to another. Rick finds that using colors makes him more responsible for his rubric.

Annotating Student Work on an iPad

Kaijsa focuses on an alternative approach. Using her iPad, she makes written comments on a document. She saves the document as a PDF and saves it to the iPad. She opens the document in Notability, and writes on the document with a stylus. Notability also allows for comments. Side note: presentations are being served from Dropbox. Notability can organize documents in folders. Kaijsa pulls the document from Dropbox. You can also mark up documents on your computer.

Providing Video and Audio Feedback

Tricia uses Camtasia to comment on student documents. She uploads the videos to YouTube. Tricia saw the quality of student work improve because students could review videos. Tricia also uses screencasting, to highlight discussions from the week before and continues the discussion. These video highlights helped students refocus on discussions.

Rick points out that Jing is free, and the video tops out at 5 minutes. Kaijsa uses screencasting to show library processes. It is easier to show than to tell. Meg has experimented with screencasting and podcasting. She uses it more for earlier assignments. Meg feels that audio alone can be frustrating. Images and or video help learning.

Considering Accessibility and Student Privacy

The group asked questions about captioning and transcription options. Good questions about Camtasia and other screencasting options. Discussing FERPA concerns and making videos private between students and instructors.

Additional Reading

• Book Review: Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes
• Book Review: Evidence-based Training Methods: A Guide for Training Professionals

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