Improving Your Feedback for Student Growth Matt Sharkey-Smith, MFA Writing Instructor and Coordinator of Graduate Writing Initiatives Walden University.

Improving Your Feedback for Student Growth

Matt Sharkey-Smith, MFAWriting Instructor and Coordinator of Graduate Writing InitiativesWalden University Writing Center

Hillary Wentworth, MFAWriting Instructor and Coordinator of Undergraduate Writing InitiativesWalden University Writing Center

Welcome to Today’s Webinar!

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Agenda

• Crash course in writing pedagogy• Best practices for writing feedback– Strategies you can use alongside your

existing methods of grading and commenting

• Alternative feedback• Practice, practice, practice

Quality Over Quantity

How tutors/instructors respond matters.

• Cognitive load theory

– Students can only retain so much in working memory–Writing and revising involve

high cognitive demand

Quality Over Quantity

Students react better to a few comments on major writing issues than to many comments on smaller issues (Hewett, 2010).

• Focusing your writing feedback– saves you time– avoids overwhelming the student

Prioritize Your Writing Feedback

Hierarchy of Concerns• Favor global issues (e.g.,

logic, structure)

• For persistent local issues (e.g., grammar, APA style), identify the issue and link to more information

Argument development

Organization

Voice and style

Mechanics

Model Effective Writing

When commenting on an issue, model a possible revision in your comments.

Encourage Dialogue

• Create a framework for discussion.• A call-and-response table

– guides students to ask specific, manageable questions.

– reduces revision to two or three concrete tasks.

– simplifies the process of asking and answering.

Call-and-Response TableMy Comments to You Questions or

Comments for Me? Please Write Them

Here

What You’re Doing Well

Effective overall structure for the paper, with an introduction to the topic.

Use of transitions to guide the reader from sentence to sentence.

What You Could Work On

Write topic sentences to focus your paragraphs.

Continue to work on expressing ideas in complete sentences and maintaining the appropriate verb tense.

Where to Go for More Information

For a helpful tutorial on sentence structure, go to http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/Grammar-and-ELL.htm and click on “Everything You Wanted to Know About English But Were Afraid to Ask” (on the right side of the web page).

The Importance of Specificity

• Students need prompt, detailed, and anchored writing feedback (Zepke & Leach, 2010) to

– know what you are suggesting and why.– implement changes more effectively.

• Students appreciate that you are actually reading and engaging with their material.

Consider the Difference

More detail needed. The concept of ethics is an important one, so I suggest you develop it by providing more information.

Nice job! You’ve introduced the topic well by providing background research on the AIDS crisis.

? Hmm…what exactly do you mean by the evolution of humanity?

The Importance of Tone

• Writing is personal.

• Online, asynchronous communication–eliminates eye contact

and gesture.–exacerbates slips in tone.

The Importance of Tone

• Students become frustrated or fixated on the negative.–Comments like makes no sense “not only

made [students] feel unmotivated to revise but also diminished their capacity to think” (Treglia, 2008, p. 105).

Consider the Difference

You’re really struggling here. You seem to be having difficulty.

Awk. This combination of words is hard for me to understand.

I know we’ve discussed this problem before, so why do you keep doing this?

Do you have any questions about APA citation? I want to make sure you understand my previous comments.

Tweaking Tone

• Do you even know what a paragraph is? This is way too long.

• Try breaking up this long paragraph into two or three shorter paragraphs to allow me to follow your ideas.

A Tone Check

• Sometimes it pays to scan through your comments before posting.

• You can revise anything you’ve typed “in the heat of the moment.”

The Tone Game

{Please complete the worksheet.}

Tired of Typing?: Jing

• Free program for audiovisual feedback: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html –Record your screen up to 5 minutes as you

comment on a paper.– Send the video link to the student.

• Consider: Jing also offers screenshot annotation.

Tired of Typing?: Jing

• Jing allows you to –prioritize due to limited time–model in motion– specify by pointing–maintain measured verbal tone

Tired of Typing?: Audio• Replace text with audio comments in MS Word.

• Spoken comments can help you maintain a rapport with the student and potentially spend less time.

Try These Strategies

Practice, Practice, Practice

• Review the sample paper, commenting specifically on writing rather than content.

• Keep in mind the issues we’ve discussed—prioritization, modeling, specificity, and tone—and consider ways you can incorporate them into your feedback.

Discussion and Q & A

Follow up with us via email:• [email protected]• Graduate specialty

• [email protected] • Undergraduate specialty