Principle 4: Prompt Feedback

Good practice in undergraduate education gives prompt feedback.

Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses your learning. When starting a class, students need help in assessing their existing knowledge and competence. Then, in class, students need frequent opportunities to perform and then receive feedback on their performance. Finally, at various points during their college experience students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how they might fill that gap.

Feedback for students can come from many sources, but the two most important are instructors and peers. Instructors should promptly grade and return assignments; and the grade should be more than just an "OK" hastily scrawled on the top of the page. Peer feedback will happen at all sorts of odd times, seldom under the instructor's control. However, it is important to provide a structured method for students to evaluate each others' work and provide feedback in a non-threatening way.

Rubrics

A rubric is a standard used to grade a project, paper, or other assignment. Typically, rubrics are laid out in a grid where various aspects of the project (timeliness, research, composition, etc.) are listed in rows down the page and various levels of perfection (superior, acceptable, unacceptable, etc.) are listed in columns across the top of the page. Then, the rubric describes exactly what a student must do for each aspect of the project to earn a "Superior" grade. This provides great feedback for the student; almost before the project is even started.

While instructors must ultimately construct their own rubrics for class, there are many available online that make good "starter" documents.

Rubric Tools

Rubric Generator. This is a simple wizard that prints a rubric with the instructor's name, class identification, and other basic information at the top of a rubric. The intent is that an instructor could create a rubric and print a copy for each student. Of course, most instructors would want to save the rubric and modify it for their own classes rather than simply print it as is. There are, though, rubrics available in many different disciplines and this site will help you get a rubric started.

The University of Wisconsin collection. These rubrics were generated by education majors and cover a broad range of topics; however, they are mostly focused on K-12 classes so they would have to be modified for use with college students.

Verbal Feedback

One novel way to provide feedback to students is using verbal techniques, where the instructor sends an audio file containing verbal notes about an assignment to the student. Research has shown that verbal feedback...

  1. was perceived to be more effective than text-based feedback for conveying nuance
  2. was associated with feelings of increased involvement and enhanced learning community
    interactions
  3. was associated with increased retention of content
  4. was associated with the perception that the instructor cared more about the student.

Instructors using Microsoft Word may be able to add a "Voice Object" to a comment balloon so their students hear the instructor's voice while reviewing their papers. This option, though, is not without some problems; the greatest of which is the requirement for the student to have a copy of Word to review the corrections. Optionally, instructors can open Word (or other format) documents with Adobe Acrobat and record voice comments there. By doing that, the files are saved in a standard PDF format and students can hear the comments without having to have a copy of a costly program.

Verbal Feedback Tools

EyeJot. Instructors can send video messages as easily as they send email with EyeJot. When someone creates an EyeJot, the recipient gets a friendly email message telling them they have a new video message, which they can watch with a single click. This is a nice way to stay in touch using video.

Vaestro. This is a voice-driven forum. Instructors can begin a forum topic and students can respond to that topic - all by voice. There is value added when students can hear each other's voices as they discuss some topic.

Learning Management System. Your school's Learning Management System may have the capability to set up audio or video discussion boards, assignments, feedback, or other activities. Be sure to check that resource before branching out into the ether.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Instructors may find that over the course of teaching the same class for several semesters, they tend to hear the same questions each semester. It would be a great time-saver for the instructor to create a FAQ page and post the answers to those questions there. Students could then get feedback almost before they even ask the question.

Instructors who maintain their own web pages can create and post a FAQ page for any classes they teach. Those who do not have their own web site can easily use a wiki (see Principle 2) to create a FAQ page.