How do I offer fast feedback on formative assessments?

Formative assessments are important tools for progress monitoring, which can inform our own teaching practices by determining whether or not students have mastered certain concepts in a scaffolded approach to their summative assessments.  According to Kulik and Kulik, as paraphrased in Flower Darby’s Small Teaching Online, “One meta-analysis of more than 50 studies on this question found that feedback on lower-stakes assessments such as quizzes or classroom activities was more beneficial when it was immediate” (111).  Therefore, we need to consider methods and tools that will allow us to return constructive, descriptive feedback on all formative assessments immediately or at least very quickly to students in order for them to gain the most benefit from these assessments. 

Instructional Solutions

Since we need to make sure our feedback on formative assessments is provided immediately, or very quickly, and contains detailed, descriptive feedback that students can use to improve their performance on later formative assessments and ultimately summative assessments, let’s consider the following methods and tools that would help us obtain that goal. 

For formative, or lower-stakes assessments, consider the following tools to provide immediate or quick feedback for students:

1. Surveys work well for students to complete self-assessments that can serve as a reflection activity associated with a formative assessment. 

2. Use Auto-Graded Quizzes  for multiple choice questions so that students can receive an immediate grade. Then, include feedback for each of the questions that you can schedule to be released after the quiz closes through Submission Views.

3. Use the Pass/Fail Grade Item to show students completed metacognitive reflections.

4. Strategically use Whole Class Feedback as announcements or discussion posts to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the class overall for a particular assessment, such as a quiz, discussion, or assignment, in addition to what you wanted students to learn from the assessment. You can provide links to some articles that might explain common issues noticed and maybe provide optional interactive practice quizzes for them. 

5. 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. 

6. Pairing students up for peer feedback, where students provide feedback for each other, can be used to encourage student-student interaction as well as occasionally relieve you from some feedback responsibility. You can arrange peer reviews the old fashion way, by providing a list in announcements or on a discussion board to notify them who they are paired with and then have them collaborate by using Google docs, email, or any other method they are comfortable using.  However, you can pair students up in CourseDen using the Group Tool with Lockers, which creates an assignment area in which they can submit their documents in addition to a locker area in which they can share documents prior to submitting.  

7. If you have a checklist by which you want to grade an assessment, consider using at-a-glance grading, which is a holistic grading method where the assignment receives credit according to how many items were completed on the corresponding checklist. 

8. Intelligent agents are a tool in CourseDen that allows you to collect data with the option of sending automatic emails to students. For example, you could set up an intelligent agent to detect who has not submitted an assignment by the due date and automatically send an alert to those students with information on next steps for them. Likewise, you can set up an intelligent agent to collect the data regarding which students missed an assignment due date, then view the results of those data in order to manually reach out to each of those students via their University email, since they may not be logging into CourseDen, or by placing a phone call to those students to discuss their situations. Similarly, you can set up an intelligent agent to email students who made below a certain grade on an assessment with suggestions on supplementary material or available student resources, such as the University Writing Center or the Center for Academic Success. 

9. 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.

Ed Tech Quick Guides

Surveys 

Auto-Graded Quizzes 

Submission Views

Pass/Fail Grade Item 

Rubrics 

Group Tool with Lockers 

Intelligent Agents: Creation  

Intelligent Agents: View Results 

Video Note