Feedback & Grading: Designing

Effective, Efficient Strategies

Julie Sievers

Director of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship

Southwestern University

Goals

Learn how backward design & SLOs can help plan feedback

Articulate your goals for student feedback

Know a variety of feedback strategies

Identify strategies to address your course

Gain resources for continued exploration

Activity 1

Reflect on

Current

Experience

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Feedback by

DesignHow can we be intentionalabout feedback and grading?

How can we make strategicchoices about efficiency in feedback and grading?

What general principles should guide how much feedback we provide, when to provide it, and how to provide it?

Student Learning Objectives

(SLOs)

The knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits of mind -- that students take from a learning experience

o cognitive and other learning processes.

o what students, not professors, will know & do

o what students can know/ do after course or graduation

Cognitive Skills | Bloom

What should

students be

able to do?

Bloom, 1956

Revised (2001) | Anderson &

Krathwohl

Revised (2001) | Anderson &

Krathwohl

Kinds of knowledge

Cognitive Processes

Fink | 2003

Backward Design

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Activity 2

Think / Pair / Share

A Framework of

Design Questions

On what learning objectives do students need the most feedback?

At what points in the course will feedback have the most impact?

What feedback strategies are best for promoting learning?

What feedback strategies are best for justifying the grade?

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A Menu of

Strategies and Principles

1. Limit and focus feedback

2. Develop clear criteria and rubrics

3. Reconsider the # of feedback tasks

4. Involve students

5. Strategically plan feedback time

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Limit, Focus Feedback

Limit comments to key

developmental tasks student needs

to work on

Focus on forward-looking and

transferable feedback

Focus on drafts, early and middle

stages of work – not final products

Don’t be an editor: try minimal

marking

Avoid overwhelming students

Clear Criteria &

RubricsUse learning objectives to create

clear goals & criteria

Vary your toolkit

o Scoring rubrics

o Feedback rubrics

o Completion & minimal rubrics

o Digitized rubrics

Reconsider the Number

of Feedback Tasks

Fewer short assignments?

Periodic feedback (don’t grade

everything)

Assignments with completion points

but no feedback on quality

Assignments with peer feedback but

no instructor feedback

Oral feedback – to class, via audio

file, or in conferences

Involve Students

Design peer review sessions.

Require a self-check to ensure they

have followed requirements and

fulfilled all tasks.

Consider gateway requirements?

Engage them in self-assessment and

metacognition during and after

completing an assignment.

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Activity 3

Think / Pair / Share

RESOURCES

Session Resources | http://bit.ly/2aVHYus

Debby Ellis Writing Center |http://www.southwestern.edu/offices/writing/