Providing Feedback That Will Be Used

You can always tell when the first round of assessment begins in the 16 week classes. That is because we always see a rise in the number of eLearning and accommodated testers in the Testing Center. In addition, after more than three decades in higher education, I know that having enough time to do all of the things we need to do for good teaching and learning is one of the tasks that faculty constantly struggle with. That is why a recent article that ran in Inside Higher Ed caught my attention. Dr. Deborah J. Cohen provides us with what she describes as a faster way to grade in 2020. She writes, "I came of age teaching when students picked up their graded work in boxes outside of professors’ offices. That also meant many students never came to retrieve their final papers after I had spent hours on tedious commenting. Some had graduated, and some simply did not care -- they were fine just seeing the final posted grade. It was as if I were writing long, involved letters to myself. I refuse to engage in that wasted work now. Whatever requires my feedback happens earlier in the semester, so that students have an opportunity to use the comments to improve their work. And on every syllabus, I indicate the following, which sets clear boundaries and places accountability squarely on the student: “You will get much more out of this course, and any course you will ever take, if you concern yourself more with the processes of how to think, how to learn and how to write than on the letter grades. In 10 years, you will probably forget the grade you got in my class, but I hope that what will stay with you are the learning tools and skills that you will acquire." I suggest you read the entire short article to learn more about her time-saving grading practices.

DOES A BAD GRADE MOTIVATE OUR STUDENTS?
David Gooblar wrote a terrific post a while back that is filled with great information specifically about grades and motivation. He wrote, "In an exhaustive review of the literature on formative assessment, two researchers at King's College drew on a number of sources who have documented a phenomenon familiar to many faculty — that is, students’ reluctance to be drawn into a more serious engagement with learning work. Such students, for a variety of reasons, do not primarily aspire to learn as much as possible. Rather, they want to get by with minimal effort, avoiding any disasters along the way. For those students (and it's fair to say my student who wrote a poor essay falls into this category), a properly bad grade might be just such a disaster. A bad grade might be the jolt that lets those students know their current approach is not working. But if we acknowledge that grades might be able to help in our efforts to motivate students, we also have to understand that we can't rely on grades alone." Keep reading here.

THE POWER OF YET
I often include #teachingmatters on the tweets of the Teaching+Learning Center's twitter account. But it's not just a hashtag that may be trending from time to time, it is something I believe in wholeheartedly. A great teacher brings so much to a class. Students respond to someone who is engaging, caring, organized, and committed to their success. I have posted about how grading and motivation are linked but I want to share with you an article by Amy Conley that synthesizes the research on this topic. I especially like the grading suggestions chart that draws on Carol Dweck's work, among others.

WHY THE FIRST EXAM ISN'T JUST THE FIRST ASSESSMENT
It is that time of the semester when we may be giving students an assessment of some type. It may be a quiz, full-blown exam, essay, or formative assessments in the class. Of course we are doing this to judge the students progress and to see how effective our teaching has been. I always spend some time explaining that the assessment is also a time for them to reflect. How did they do? Did their study effort equal their grade expectations? Have they learned the material yet? Dr. Maryellen Weimer has a post on this topic that you might find useful.

CREATING MINDSET MOMENTS
Bill Ferriter writes, "I've got a student this year -- let's call her Aliyana -- who just plain makes me smile.  She's unique times ten -- comfortable being different and always ready to think creatively.  She's also super funny and super kind -- which means she's super well-liked by her peers.  In a lot of ways, she's the kind of kid that I hope my own daughter will become. But at times, I think she doubts herself as a learner. She not the first to raise her hand in classroom conversations -- and when she does, there's a hesitance in her voice that hints at an intellectual insecurity that surprises me.  It's almost like school hasn't been kind to her over the years and so she's just not sure that being a thought leader is a role that she's supposed to fill in our classroom.  In her own mind, she's the funny kid -- not the smart kid.  She makes us laugh.  Other kids help us learn." Continue reading

TECH VERSUS INNOVATION
Matt Read writes a blog titled Confessions of a Community College Dean. His most recent post provokes us to think about technology versus innovation, specifically as it relates to teaching. "My grandmother collected absurd kitchen technology, which made visits fun. There wasn’t an inside-the-egg-scrambler or fry baby on the market that she didn’t have. She had a microwave oven back when nobody did; I remember watching her “nuke” a hot dog, and both of us enjoying its twisty death throes. As an adult, I realize that I inherited the gadget gene from her. My platform agnosticism -- I’ve had phones that ran Android, iOS, and even webOS -- is only partially about comparison shopping or avoiding cultism; it’s largely an excuse to try all sorts of new stuff. PC at work, Chromebook on the road?  Why not?  On Wednesday, though, I had two separate conversations about innovation on campus that I realized later had a common theme: tech and innovation aren’t the same thing." Read more here.


WHY DID YOU GIVE ME A BAD GRADE
Feedback that is both affirming and corrective is necessary for people to learn. Defined as information on the results of one’s efforts, feedback that is clear, specific and timely motivates students to improve. Since feedback is most often connected to grading that follows assigned work or assessment activities, Walvoord and Anderson say that grading “…encompasses tailoring the test or assignment to the learning goals of the course…offering feedback so students can develop as thinkers and writers, communicating about students’ learning to appropriate audiences, and using results to plan improvements in the classroom…”. Thus assessment provides feedback for both learners and teachers. Read more here. 

WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE
The battle to stop our students from using online resources like Wikipedia is long over. What we must do now is help our students to understand how best to use Wikipedia. Matthew Vetter, an academic specializing in digital rhetoric and humanities, has a nice post about his efforts in this area. He writes, "Working with Wiki Ed opens up possibilities for how we teach, how that teaching engages the world, what our students accomplish in the classroom, and what kinds of conversations we can have about critical issues related to humanities and digital culture." Read more here.

JOIN US AT THE BRCC-ACADIAN
If you missed the recent faculty development workshop on Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Community College Students, you are in luck. We will have a repeat performance on October 21 from 2:00 - 3:30 PM in room 210 at the Acadian Campus. Attendees will learn about common warning signs of mental health problems in this population. Session facilitators Dr. Bridget Sonnier-Hillis and Wendy Devall will provide information about how to respond to students who are experiencing significant stressors or who have suspected mental health issues. This will include information about on-campus and community resources to which faculty may refer these students. Attendees also will learn basic, practical skills for dealing with behaviorally challenging students. Register

TEACHING VERSUS COVERING THE MATERIAL
Nicki Monahan writes, "With access to a world of information as close as our phones, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all there is to teach. New material continues to emerge in every academic discipline, and teachers feel a tremendous responsibility not only to stay current themselves, but to ensure that their learners are up to date on the most recent findings. Add to this information explosion the passionate desire by faculty members to share their particular areas of expertise and it’s easy to see why content continues to grow like the mythical Hydra of Greek legend. And like Hercules, who with each effort to cut off one of Hydra’s nine heads only to have two more grow in its place, faculty struggle to tame their content monsters. The two most common strategies for managing course content rarely yield positive results. Cutting back or trimming content leads to agonizing decisions but does not produce substantive changes." Continue reading here.

USING GRADES TO MOTIVATE
Barry Schwartz and Ken Sharpe ask the question "Do giving grades work as incentives?" In response they offer the following, "There is no question that we can use grades to get students to change their behavior, but are we getting them to learn more? One danger is that grade-focused teaching corrodes the very meaning of learning. The purpose of learning becomes merely the achievement of grades. Not the mastery of the material. Not finding innovative and imaginative solutions to tough problems. Not joining with fellow students to run with an idea and see how much each can learn from the others. It becomes instead what former Harvard dean Harry Lewis calls "an empty game of score maximization." It makes the work seem pointless." Continue reading here.

GIVERS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE NO MORE
Shana Oliver has done an exceptional job of pulling together all of the best ideas that have emerged from the research about faculty and student engagement. The article provides a nice concise list of ten ways you can use to engage under-performing students. She writes, "What is the intended goal of the lesson? Remember, there is one essential question per lesson, and students must be able to answer this question by the end of the lesson. With essential questions, teachers really have to be intentional about what they want the students to be able to do, and it has to be at the highest-level of learning. The students have to be able to analyze and apply; they cannot just answer the question with a yes or no. It has to be an extended response. An essential question must be "multi-skill" in order for it to be a good one." To read the rest of the article, click here.

ADOPT A BEAR TIPS
If Santa Monica College had relied solely on data analytics to predict whether Jaime J. would succeed, the picture would have looked bleak. He was, after all, a financially struggling, first-generation Hispanic student who was juggling a job with classes. His math skills were shaky. But there was more to the picture than that. Using a 30-minute online assessment that focuses on noncognitive skills, advisers at the two-year institution in Southern California learned that Jaime was also a conscientious student with good study habits who had long dreamed of becoming a computer engineer. The college assigned him a success coach (the college’s dean of counseling and retention), who met with Jaime weekly to keep him motivated. Continue reading.

GRADING IS ABOUT LEARNING
When students talk about the grades we’ve “given” them, we are quick to point out that we don’t “give” grades, students “earn” them. And that’s correct. It’s what the student does that determines the grade. But that statement sort of implies that we don’t have much of a role in the process—that we’re simply executing what the grading policy prescribes. We shouldn’t let that response cloud our thinking. Who sets up the course grading policy? Who controls it? Who has the power to change it or to refuse to change it? It’s these policies that involve us up to our eyeballs. Continue reading.