We found 283 results that contain "feedback request"

The general sample questions provided in the "process" section of the mid-semster feedback playlist are centered around three themes. Here you can find quick tips for interpreting the data related to those themes, as well as links to other #iteachmsu articles. Remember the sample questions were written generally and with the audience, students, in mind. If you see (or don't see) jargon that would(n't) be typical in your field or discipline, keep in mind we attempted framing items in ways that would make sense for survey participants. 
Thanks to our colleagues from the Enhanced Digital Learning Initiative at MSU who provided the information adapted to this article: Scott Schopieray (CAL), Stephen Thomas (Nat. Sci.) Sarah Wellman (CAL & Broad), Jeremy Van Hof (Broad)!
Theme 1: Perceptions on purpose and alignment
This theme encompasses the sample questions where students indicate if they feel that they are prepared for class and understand expectations. Ideally, answers would trend toward “4. always” If that is true and students voice needs that they have in later answers, then you can explore relationships between, say, students who generally understand what is expected of them but (might be) confused about what assignments are asking of them (this is a curious relationship worth exploring with students).Theme 1 example questions: I am prepared for class. I understand what is expected of me in preparation for class.
If responses raise concerns, consider: 

Clearly re-stating your course’s learning outcomes verbally and in writing 
Clearly indicating how an activity fits into the broader course structure, prepares students for the working world, or aligns with the outcomes 
Ensuring that the content assessed on tests & quizzes is content that’s been previewed in prior course activities 
Before any course event (lecture, activity, test, etc) state clearly what course objectives are addressed 

As you process the data from your students, be sure to focus on trends across feedback - both celebrations of what’s working and opportunities for change. This information provides you with an opportunity to highlight what is working for your own planning,in addition to providing supportive rationale for using certain teaching strategies (which you should share with your class.
Other resources include...

SOIREE 
Introduction to Backward Design
Writing Measurable Outcomes for Students

Theme 2: Perceptions of structure, community, and workload
This theme relates to questions that explore students’ perceptions of the class community, structure, and workload. These are powerful descriptive questions that enable you to explore a number of issues with students (and/or with your colleagues), depending on the nature of student responses. Theme 2 example questions: I have the opportunity to ask questions. The material is interesting and engaging. Feedback is provided in a manner that helps me learn. Instructions are clear. 
If responses raise concerns, consider: 

Narrowing the toolset students need to use to complete required activities 
Using the full suite of native tools in D2L – including the discussion board, the calendar, and the checklist 
Providing opportunities for students to interact with you and each other in a no-stress, non-academic setting (perhaps via Zoom before or after class) 
Re-visiting assignment and project descriptions to very clearly indicate how students use tools, seek assistance, and can contact you and/or their peers 


Building in multiple points of clarification and reminders of due dates and work processes  

You can also check out this from SOIREE:

Resources to Build Inclusivity and Community 

Theme 3: Perceptions of learning environment 
Questions in this theme indicate students' self-perception of their learning and the learning environment. Three of these questions are open-ended, so you want to make sure you’re recognizing the time it takes students to provide this type of feedback.  An easy way to find patterns in the open ended responses is to paste all them into a word cloud generator. Consider using this tool: https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create Theme 3 example questions: This course's meetings and activities motivate me to learn. The way new concepts are introduced is aligned with my learning style. Overall, my learning in this course meets my expectations. What elements of class have contributed to or proved most helpful for your learning so far? What could be added or changed to reduce barriers to learning in this class so far?
After you consider the responses to these questions in addition to the items in the themes above, you have information to adapt your plan for the remainder of the semester. Be sure to tell your students what you’re changing and why (based on what feedback). Asking for feedback without following up can suggest to students that their opinions might not matter, and harm your relationship. Instead, address opportunities for what you and they can do to make the most of the semester, share your intended plans for utilizing the feedback, and thank students for their honesty, inviting them to continue working with you to improve the course.
You can also consider checking out these additional resources from SOIREE:

Student to Instructor interactions & engagement 
Student to student interactions & engagement 

1. Review the feedback
You want to ensure students feel their feedback is valuable to you and the course, so keep your students abreast on where you are in the review process. Are you synthesizing data? Noting key themes? Maybe you're working on a way to present the anonymous findings back to your class. Regardless, review the data, share it back, and make a plan for change. 
 
2. Quick Tips on How to Interpret the Data 
Review our article on how to interpret the data. These tips are adapted from the Enhanced Digital Learning Initiative at MSU: Scott Schopieray (CAL), Stephen Thomas (Nat. Sci.) Sarah Wellman (CAL & Broad), Jeremy Van Hof (Broad). Additional sources: Faculty Innovation Center at University of Texas at Austin 
 
3. Discuss with a Colleague 
Review this article on debriefing with peers. 
There is a body of literature that indicates biases are real and problematic in students’ evaluation of teaching. The goal of this mid-semester instrument is not evaluative of the instructor, but instead is focused on feedback surrounding the learning experience. That being said, be aware that a host of factors including (but not limited to) gender, race, and subject matter, stress, and load can lead students to make statements that imprecisely reflect the actual quality of instruction.
We recognize it can be difficult to look past the most impassioned individual feedback and consider all the data holistically, but remember that the “loudest” voice or the longest comments may not reflect the overall feelings of learners. One helpful strategy is to have someone you trust read the comments before you do, then provide you their overall impressions and filter out any inappropriate remarks.  
 
4. Share with students the common themes surfaced in the data
When you collect mid-semester feedback, you are asking your students for feedback. You want to make sure they feel valued and heard, that they have a voice in your class space, and that their input isn’t being collected just “for show.” You should clearly indicate which elements of their feedback you will and will not act on (and why). We know that students who feel empowered and who see their voice reflected in class activities feel more engaged and are more likely to show positive learning outcomes.

For the last few weeks, we have been offering time-saving tips for delivering feedback to individual students and to larger groups as they work on projects for your classes. But we suspect that now, since the semester is over, you likely will not be giving your students much formative feedback.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use this time to improve the efficiency of your feedback processes. Now that the semester is over, you have a great opportunity to do some forward thinking about next semester. And, if you plan it right, we think you can actually provide your students with more feedback, while spending less time delivering that feedback.
In this post, we detail the design of a semester and feedback plan to maximize the amount of feedback students receive on their work and minimize the time we spend writing to students.
Designing Semester and Feedback Plans
Although designing a semester plan for your class seems like a daunting task, it allows you to frontload scheduling due dates, giving you more time during the actual semester to flesh out the specifics of your course (like assigned readings and class activities) as it progresses week to week, assignment to assignment. To create this kind of plan, we are providing you with starting points that focus on two essential functions of your classroom: what you ask students to produce, and what kind of feedback they will need for those products. By creating a rough timeline of assignments and feedback, you can avoid overbooking your schedule (and yourself), and respond to students more efficiently.
Designing a Semester Plan

Make a list of your major assignments. When will you introduce an assignment to your class? What are the goals of those assignments? How long will these assignments take for students to complete?
Make a list of your minor assignments. What smaller activities does the class need to complete to support that major assignment? How long will those take? Will they require feedback from you, their peers, the class as a whole (hey we have plenty of resources to help you with this btw)? Where will these varieties of feedback be most beneficial for students in your class?
Identify places where students need feedback. Do your students need your feedback on one major assignment before they can complete the next one? What goals do the minor projects support?
Consider your own schedule. Now is also a good time to remember to plan your semester timeline in accordance with your own academic life–are there weeks you will attend conferences? If you are a graduate student, when are your final projects due? When are your exams? Maybe avoid scheduling due dates around this time.

Designing a Feedback Plan

Schedule products. After you’ve listed your major and minor assignments and the amount of time they’ll take, begin placing them on a timeline.
Identify goals. Based on the overarching goals for a unit or a semester, which goals does each of these assignments support? Articulating these in advance will help guide how you design feedback prompts in the future.
Identify kinds of feedback students can receive. Knowing that there are a variety of ways to respond to student work, identify specific kinds of feedback students can receive to enhance their performance along project goals.
Distribute feedback moments across time, and distribute labor across people. This is a point we emphasized in our earlier posts — don’t plan all your feedback to come at once. If you distribute the work of feedback across time, students will receive more — and more focused — responses, and will likely absorb more of their feedback.
Distribute the labor of giving feedback across people. Students will receive more feedback (and, we believe, will learn more) if you give them the responsibility of responding to their colleagues at critical moments in a project.

Check out a model feedback plan based on a unit Matt used in his class in the Spring 2015 semester.
 
As you can see, with this feedback plan, students receive feedback throughout the whole process of producing their research papers and projects, and get feedback on every minor product that leads up to the major products. The feedback is also designed so that students receive feedback on each of the goals for the Research Unit.
 
However, this feedback plan is designed to minimize the amount of time Matt spends writing to students. During the whole unit, he will only need to write to students two times (Week 3 and Week 7), and might write a total of 3 paragraphs to each student. But, he will also offer individuals feedback through verbal feedback during scheduled class time and in individual conferences (Week 8 and Week 11), and provide verbal feedback to the whole class on several occasions (Week 2, Week 6, Week 7).
 
While not all teachers have the luxury to control all parts of their assignments or schedule, we hope and believe the strategy of developing a Feedback Plan is flexible enough to work for many teachers.
 
We’d Love to Hear from You: What methods do you use to schedule your assignments? What projects take up the most time during your semester? What do you do when the timing of a unit is too fast or slow? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Gomes, M. & Noel Turner, H. Lighten Your Load: Planning for More Efficient Feedback Next Semester. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

Be sensitive to the language you’re using when giving feedback. Try to be clear in what it is you’re feeling when reading and how you’re understanding it. Usually this will allow you to flesh out what you want to give feedback on. Often, it helps to try to describe what you see and how you see something. 
 
A helpful heuristic:
 
Describe: Detail your impression of what the writer is attempting to convey. 
 
Evaluate: Explain how effective you perceive their strategies to be in the piece. 
 
Suggest: Make suggestions from your position as an audience member for how the writer can revise. Suggestions should aim to help the writer clearly and convincingly convey their argument. 
 
Dos and Don’ts

Don’t give all criticism or all praise. Give both positive and negative comments. 
Be specific with comments. “This is good” does not provide constructive feedback. 
Try not to get caught up on minor grammar issues. Look at higher-order ideas.

Topic Area: Student Success
Presented by: Regina Gong, Jason Almerigi
Abstract:
The MSU Libraries' OER Program is a student success initiative that was launched in the Fall 2019 semester. The OER program goals are affordability, access, agency, innovation, and engagement in innovative pedagogical models that facilitate learning. This presentation will provide an overview of the OER program, including the courses using an OER as course learning materials. It will also present survey results and course success metrics disaggregated by relevant demographic background factors from over 8,000 students enrolled in Fall 2020 courses that adopted OER learning materials. We will discuss how the cost of textbooks has impacted our students' lives and how OER has provided them the means to address the affordability and accessibility of learning materials, especially during the pandemic.

We are writing teachers, and in the world of writing, feedback is HOLY. But does that mean we love spending every waking hour responding to student work? Indeed it does not! But because we’re writing teachers, we see lots of writing, and think a lot about how to devise ways of making our lives easier.
 
In this post, and in others, we’ll discuss ways to reduce the amount of concentrated time you spend providing feedback by creatively harnessing classroom resources. We’ve found it essential to distribute the labor of providing feedback across time and people. In other words, don’t do it all at once, and don’t do it all yourself. This week, we offer ways for providing individual feedback once a project is under way.
Teacher-to-Student Feedback: Four Ways to Narrow Your Parameters
Both of us know that sitting with a stack of 50 student papers and no strategy other than “get through them” can be daunting. So, what can you do to strategize?
Do you offer as much feedback as you can muster? Do you let feedback emerge organically from your first read of a project? While there are times when this can be a pedagogically useful approach (usually at the beginning of a project), we’ve found there are more efficient ways to respond. Here are some strategies we’ve used to narrow parameters & get work done:

Ask students to craft one question about their work, and use that question to guide your feedback. Since we teach writing, a question we receive from a student might look something like this: “Does the organization of my paper make sense?” Students’ questions limit the scope of our responses, as long as we insist on only responding to only those questions.
Craft your own question about students’ work, and use that question to guide your feedback. Specific questions can often provide useful feedback (for example, “how well does evidence support the thesis?”). In Matt’s experience, the more specific the question, the less time he spends thinking about how to respond.
Have students identify a specific outcome or assessment criterion they are concerned with, and respond only to that concern. When Matt uses this strategy, the question becomes “What does this student need to do in order to perform better along specific project goals or assessment criteria? What do they need to do to become a more reflective writer (project goal) or to organize their claims effectively (criterion)?” This strategy has the added benefit of prodding him to specifically elaborate on his understanding of outcomes or assessment criteria.
You can identify a specific outcome or assessment criteria too. Maybe you only want to reply to students’ engagement with previous literature — maybe responding to only that one thing will be most pedagogically useful. We get it, it works, it saves time.

Student-to-Student Feedback: Four Ways to Redistribute the Labor of Response
Like we promised earlier, it’s entirely possible to distribute the labor of responding across a class. For example, many of you are probably familiar with peer review, and some of you may even use peer review. Here are a few recommendations we have for facilitating student-to-student feedback activities:

Model feedback for students. Maybe they’ve given feedback to their peers before, maybe they haven’t. Show students what good feedback looks like to you. We like soliciting work from previous and current students and modeling in class how we would respond to that student’s work.
Create effective feedback structures. While some students might do great with open-ended prompts for offering feedback, in general, that feedback will only improve with well-structured prompts you’ve designed.
Do it regularly. Don’t just talk about student-to-student feedback once at the beginning of a course and pray that will be enough to turn them into professional responders. Instead, return regularly to the activity of offering feedback, and talk openly about what kinds of feedback will be most useful at various points in a project.
Call “peer review” something else. Heather likes to call it “feedback.” When she has called the activity “peer review,” she has found students are more likely to gravitate toward line editing, grammar, or what folks in writing studies call “lower-order concerns.” When she stopped calling it “peer review” and started calling it “feedback,” students were more likely to offer “higher-order concerns,” focusing their attention on organization, quality of analysis, ability to synthesize literature, and strength of arguments.

We’d Like to Know: What time-saving methods have you used to respond to your classes once a project is under way? What methods of individual response have you found most effective for your students’ learning? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Gomes, M. & Noel Turner, H. Lighten Your Load: Eight Ways to Make Individual Feedback More Efficient. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

Photo by Tony Hand on Unsplash
 
While individual feedback can be useful for attending to specific aspects of individual students’ work, we’ve found students sometimes exhibit similar strengths and challenges. These are moments when your time might be better used identifying commonalities across a class and using these commonalities as teaching opportunities. Below, find three different ways to effectively structure group feedback.

Identify Class Patterns (Teacher-to-Class Feedback): Much of the labor of providing responses to students comes from writing to each student individually. It can help to identify when individual responses are necessary, when responses to an entire class might be more pedagogically efficient, and when to deliver feedback to an entire class. To do this, we:


Read through projects and identify patterns. For example, in a recent project we assigned, we found many students were performing well in terms of citing sources and crafting mechanically correct sentences, but had similar problems with organization and offering critical analysis. Because of the pervasiveness of his concerns, we interpreted these issues as something worth spending time on in class.


Address comments to the whole class. We do qualify our feedback, noting that not all students have the same strengths and weaknesses, but that what we are identifying are general patterns.


Offer to meet students individually during office hours if they have questions. Having identified specific concerns, these meetings often run much quicker than they would without specific goals.


Redistribute the Labor of Identifying Patterns (Student-to-Class Feedback): We’ve already recommended redistributing the labor of offering individualized feedback. You can do the same thing by asking students to identify patterns across the class’ work. To do this, we:


Model feedback! We told you this before, we are telling you now, and you should tell yourself this over and over again. By modeling feedback (i.e. walking through the ways you would respond to a project), you are teaching students how to respond to each other, as well as how to read and understand your comments.


Give students projects to assess. This helps students get a fuller view of the work being done across the class, allowing them to begin to notice patterns and to think about their work in relation to the work done by their classmates.


Ask students to look for patterns. We found there are several good ways to have students identify patterns: he sometimes asks students to identify strengths and weaknesses from a corpus of work; or, closer to high-stakes evaluations (or grading moments), we’ll ask them to rate performance along a specific evaluation criterion.


Ask students to generalize. What do strong projects do? What about weaker projects? Have students articulate moves that make strong projects strong. This is a place where you can intervene and offer your perspective about what makes work succeed in your class, (especially in relation to specific evaluation criteria).


Ask students to develop revision strategies. Once your class has articulated the features of good performance, ask students to and develop specific strategies for revising their own work.


Facilitate Student-to-Student Feedback (Small Group Feedback): If you like peer review but are having mixed results, structuring smaller groups of students (2-3) could help you guide student responses to the whole group. To do this, we:


Ask students to identify problems. Heather typically asks students to choose no more than three struggles from their project (“I am having a little trouble organizing my paragraphs”) or process (“I am not sure how to revise my argument”). This gives small group members (and you) specific ways to give feedback.


Ask students to respond to group member concerns. Whether their responses are physically on a group member’s paper, embedded as a digital comment, or written in a brief response memo, ask all small group members to read and respond to each other’s concerns.


Meet with small groups and facilitate feedback. Have a student share their concerns, ask their group members to provide feedback, and facilitate any questions that come up from the discussion. This could range from how to apply specific feedback to their writing or sometimes what to do if feedback from group members don’t seem helpful.

 

So you’ve collected your mid-semester feedback data. What do you do next? Select a method for sharing and responding to student feedback that works for you. Will you share a summary in D2L? Maybe you’ll provide an overview with a few slides at the next synchronous class. No matter what mode you choose, identify some patterns and touch base with your students promptly! Be sure to thank students for their comments. According to Cornell’s Center for Teaching Excellence (2012) your learners appreciate knowing you care what they have to say.
Critically reflect on the student's comments. Some feedback you get may be positive, while other feedback could be negative. In fact, almost all instructors receive negative feedback at some point in their careers. Give yourself space to acknowledge the hurt or anger you may feel. Then think about how you could continue to grow and develop your educator practice. You can also check out “How to make the best of bad course evaluations” in The Chronicle.
If you’ve identified the trends and utilized the articles in the other sections of this playlist but are still not sure about what changes to make, start by talking with a mentor and/or a peer group. MSU Interim Associate Provost for Faculty and Academic Staff Development and facilitator of the Academic Advancement Network, Dr. Marilyn Amey, shared “If I know someone is a good teacher, I might just reach out to them directly.” When prompted, “what if an instructor doesn’t know who has been successful at teaching in the past”, Dr. Amey brought up two of MSU’s educator cohort programs as resources for “people connections”.
Lilly Fellows: The Lilly Teaching Fellows Program began in 1991 and has served as “an opportunity to engage in a year-long exploration of the robust scholarship on effective practices in University teaching.” The Lilly Fellows Program has supported Fellows to become future faculty leaders and to inspire a broad range of faculty to pursue excellence in teaching. After two years of redesigns of the original Lilly Program, the 2020-2021 version of the program will focus explicitly on leadership development for those educators who see teaching and learning as core to their path toward leadership.
See if any of the past Lilly Fellows are in your network!
Adams Academy: The program brings together a cross-disciplinary group of faculty and academic staff for a year-long fellowship focused on teaching and learning. Adams Academy Fellows explore the literature on effective university teaching and learning practices and consider how this robust body of research can be used to guide instructional decisions in the courses they teach. Participants learn from and contribute to a community of teacher-scholars committed to excellence in teaching and learning.
See if any of the past Adams Academy Fellows are in your network!  
According to Dr. Ellie Louson, Instructor in Lyman Briggs College and Learning Experience Designer at the Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, in this Medium Article on Mentorship, “The university is a setting for many types of mentorship. A more senior student can mentor someone more junior, faculty or staff members mentor students, and colleagues mentor each other (near-peers with different skills to teach and learn, or a more senior person to someone more junior).” 
You can plug into existing groups and ask questions. If you don’t know of a group, check in with the units you identify with. For example, the Academic Advancement Network is hosting a regular gathering of new educators in “Starting an Academic Career in Unusual Times” community discussions. MSU’s Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA) hosts a regular writing group and monthly orientations. The Academic Specialist Advisory Committee (ASAC) provides the governance structure for the academic specialist community providing advice to university leaders and offering Table Talks and community gatherings throughout the year. 
Ultimately, don’t feel like you have to go it alone. Research has shown that reviewing student feedback in consultation with someone else is more likely to result in positive modifications in teaching/course design which can later influence future evaluations.
 
Source: Murray, H. (1997). Does evaluation of teaching lead to improvement of teaching? International Journal for Academic Development, 2(1), 8-23