Good teaching is good teaching, but we do need to consider how to adapt our face-to-face teaching strategies to the online environment. For example, we consistently provide feedback to students in the classroom through the use of oral and written instructor comments, so how can we provide the same type of meaningful feedback for our online students as well? Let’s consider the classroom strategies we use and how those can be replicated and accomplished virtually.
Online instructors struggle to give meaningful feedback to their students, partly because written comments lack vocal intonations that convey emphasis, empathy, enthusiasm, and details that take too long to write out. Studies tell us that students like audio feedback because it feels more personal and useful (i.e., more explanations and suggestions for improvement). Instructors report that they give more robust feedback, although it may take – on average – five minutes longer to create it. Video feedback is another option; video your face so students take in visual clues as you talk or use a screen capture tool to guide them through the feedback on their paper. Darby and Lang (2019) suggest these strategies for audio feedback.
Try using audio feedback to make your feedback more meaningful. Although studies indicate that audio feedback doesn’t influence learning (as measured by grades), it does make a difference in student satisfaction (Voelkel and Mello, 2014), which influences positive engagement. Engaged students are more likely to respond to the attention by working harder and immersing themselves in the course content (Darby and Lang, 2019, p. 46).
Capture a quick video of yourself talking to your student as you explain your feedback (Darby and Lang, 2019, p. 126). Henderson and Phillips (2015) report that both students and faculty found video feedback to be more useful and motivating than written comments.
Record a screen capture where you talk your student through your feedback to their work as it’s displayed on your computer screen (Darby and Lang, 2019, p. 126).
Additionally, feedback must be specific, so provide descriptive feedback with examples if possible. For example, if a student’s thesis needs to be more specific and debatable, point out ways that could accomplish this goal by providing an example thesis that is related to the same text/topic on which they are writing. Furthermore, a good grading technique to use is often called a feedback sandwich, which is simply constructive criticism bookended by praise. For instance, you want to begin with what the student did well, followed by constructive corrective criticism, or what improvements the student needs to make, and finally, encouragement to make the necessary changes. While providing feedback, also keep in mind Darby’s this time/next time categories (Darby, 112). You can provide constructive, descriptive feedback by using the following tools:
Rubrics are used to evaluate an activity or item based on a predefined set of criteria. They help ensure that activities and items are evaluated fairly and consistently. Rubrics can be used to assess discussions, quizzes, and assignments in CourseDen, and once they are created in CourseDen, you can easily grade, or assess the rubric by selecting the corresponding level for each criterion.
Inline Grading is a grading tool in CourseDen that allows you to evaluate and notate student assignment submissions with personalized comments and highlighting. There is no feature in the Inline Grading tool that allows you to save comments for future use; however, you can easily keep a Google or Word doc that contains your customized, commonly-used comments from which you can copy and paste into your documents when using Inline Grading. However, if you find yourself frequently using certain comments for certain assignments, you may want to consider adding a criterion to your rubric for that particular assessment instead.
Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software that is integrated into assignments in CourseDen, contains a grading layer, GradeMark, that allows for easy notation and review of student submissions. The only feature that GradeMark offers that is not available for the Inline Grading tool is QuickMarks, which allows you to save commonly-used comments used for grading that you can customize.
Video Note is a video capturing tool integrated into CourseDen that allows you to quickly record simple videos. You can record videos giving an overview of the feedback for each student, and if you are not camera ready and want to only leave audio feedback, you can simply cover your camera and record. Video and audio feedback provide a great connection between you and your students since they can see your body language and/or hear the inflection in your voice, both of which are a large part of communication and often lost in the online environment.
If you would rather provide video/audio feedback in addition to a screencast of a student’s assessment, such as an essay or other writing, you can use tools to capture both the screencast and video/audio simultaneously, such as Yuja, which is an integrated video capture and storage tool, or Loom, which is an external tool that is free for educators. These tools allow you to point out and read over certain parts of the submission while providing commentary for the student.
Ultimately, make sure to assign assessments that ask students to reflect on the feedback and consciously apply it to future work.
Darby, F., & Lang, J. (2019, p. 57). Small Teaching Online. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Fiock, Holly and Garcia, H. (2019). “How to Give Your Students Better Feedback with Technology.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-give-your-students-better-feedback-with-technology/
Guo, P.J., Kim, J., and Rubin, R. How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of MOOC videos. (2014). Proceedings from ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, (L@S 2014). Atlanta, GA.
Ice, P., Curtis, R., Phillips, P. & Wells, J. (2007). Using Asynchronous Audio Feedback to Enhance Teaching Presence and Students’ Sense of Community. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(2), 3-25.
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) and Lower Order Concerns (LOCs). Purdue Online Writing Lab. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/mechanics/hocs_and_locs.html
Dr. Myrna Gantner, Associate Professor, Leadership, Research, and School Improvement
mgantner@westga.edu
If you use any information from this site, please cite it appropriately:
UWG Institute for Faculty Excellence. (2021, August 17). How do I mimic the kind of feedback I provide in my F2F classes in the online environment? UWG Online Teaching Faculty Toolkit.https://sites.google.com/westga.edu/onlineteachingfacultytoolkit/online-teaching-faculty-toolkit