Herein, I reflect on the following questions about offering feedback to my students:
Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback to students and what Hattie recommends?
In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback that you provide for your students?
Providing students with feedback whether in classrooms or on their assignment paper and exams can, at times, seems a daunting task. However, I know, both from my experiences and from research like the one conducted by Hattie, that feedback is essential. Therefore, I always see feedback as integral part of my teaching philosophy and formative assessments. First of all, I make sure that I am fully accessible to my students and they can ask for help as much as they want. Secondly, I strive to provide timely, relevant, and action-oriented feedback.
Thirdly, I frequently use technology in providing feedback. In addition to written comments and feedback, I provide my students with visual and audio feedback as well. Instead of texts, I often sketch a drawing or capture an image. That would allow me and my students to annotate and use screenshots. This ability can work for students too as they can capture images of their work and reflect on it.
Contentwise, however, with the knowledge that I acquired from Hattie’s research on feedback, my feedback which is now mainly focused on fixing students’ problems should be shifted further to collaboration with students and promoting forward learning (Feed up and feed forward types). In order to do so, I should create a culture of feedback based on the process and self-regulation models of feedback through which feed my students’ interests. In my opinion, implementing the following strategies should improve the effectiveness of my feedback to students in online courses:
- Encouraging reflection, so students could go back to revisit their assignments and refine their work;
- encouraging self and peer evaluation using formats such as blogs and discussion forums;
- enabling learners to exchange messages using commentary boxes and audio notes;
- giving instant feedback through auto-scoring computer quizzes;
- enabling learners to access archives of their work to see and value their progress;
- supporting learners to set goals by making their learning visible to them;
- providing learners with data to review targets and identify focus areas.
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