• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Efficient and Thorough Feedback

How Can Instructors Provide Efficient and Thorough Feedback?

by Meredith Graupner

One of the most difficult aspects of providing feedback to students is finding enough time to do so. In a study on the nature of teacher commentary, Connors and Lunsford found that instructors rarely put longer comments on student papers mainly because “[…] they had little time or energy to say [what they wanted to say] and little faith that what they had to say would be heard” (211). Though instructors find themselves in this situation from time to time, having a dialogue with the writer is still important to helping students during the writing process. It is crucial for instructors to find ways to save time without resorting to cutting the content of their comments. The following is a list of best practices that instructors can use in the classroom to help manage the time constraints that exist with giving meaningful feedback.

• Use in-class peer review sessions. Using peer review in the classroom can lighten the workload for instructors, as well as give students ownership over their writing. See best practices for using peer-review for more information.
• Use computers to respond to student writing. Using computers to respond to student writing can take many forms. It can be as simple as typing comments as endnotes and stapling them to student papers. Instructors can also use the “comment” function in word-processors like Microsoft Word. This is helpful because students don’t have to read messy handwriting, and teachers can write more in-depth comments because typing is physically faster than handwriting for many people.
• Write more endnotes than marginal notes. This strategy helps students look at their work holistically. Doing so encourages the student to make corrections for him or herself and inspires them to work through the revising process.
• Choose a few main issues to address for each draft, rather than all issues. This strategy, combined with giving students the opportunity to submit and revise several drafts, allows the instructor to address different issues at different points in the writing process. For example, in the first draft the instructor could comment on specific content and transitions between paragraphs. After receiving the comments the student can revise and resubmit the draft, where this time the instructor could address surface level errors as a means for fine-tuning student work.

Below is a list of sources that have contributed to the suggestions that have been given above. Additional sources for other areas of feedback are listed on the references page.

This paper explains how it is necessary to respond with explicit teaching methods and constant feedback to help developmental writers accomplish their writing goals. Such feedback, Boehnlein mentions, is a way to keep students on task throughout the writing process.

This paper explains a method for implementing peer review in the classroom to give students ownership over their papers. The author explains how this strategy works in his classroom and how it affects his students writing skills.

These authors take a large scale look at the commenting strategies of teachers and analyze the trends among them. These trends indicate that instructors easily fall into the trap of responding as authority figures rather than readers of their students’ papers.

Dickinson refers to how her technique of giving computer-aided feedback to students helped her respond in a more conversational style to her students. She recommends that other instructors experiment with online commenting in order to manage the paper load they face.

This article explores the ways in which teachers respond to student writing, how their responses affect student writing, and in turn how students influence the ways in which teachers respond. Exploring these relationships gives readers ways to think about their own practices of commenting in the classroom.

This paper explains how instructors view their feedback methods as having conversations with their students about their papers. After drawing from several panel discussions that have explored this method of feedback, the author concludes that instructors need to consider the contexts of their classrooms and assignments before implementing these strategies for themselves.

The author explains that only looking at errors as the result of social and cultural differences limits the ways in which instructors teach editing practices in the classroom. Horner believes that teaching editing as negotiation through small group conferences and classroom discussions alleviates situating students as powerless against the academic standards of grammar.

Hunt explains how the use of taping comments to give audio feedback on student work aids in helping instructors save time during feedback. He also feels that giving students audio feedback makes them take a more independent approach to revising their papers.

This article explores the nature of instructor feedback and explains how instructors should questions their practices of responding to student writing. Straub poses a series of questions to help instructors evaluate their practices. One such question asks, “What kind of comments will be best for this student, with this paper, at this time?” (247).

Straub explains that teachers need to learn how to talk with their students rather than to their students during the writing process. He offers several guidelines throughout the article for teachers to consider as they incorporate conversational response in their classrooms.

BestPractices-ProvidingFeedback

• Surface Conventions and Negative Perceptions
• Time for Effective Feedback
• Power Struggles with Students
• Efficient and Thorough Feedback
• References for Providing Feedback