It’s taken me almost a year to figure out what might have gone wrong with last summer’s class. I need to take a look since this summer’s class starts Monday.
Last summer, thrilled at having only 40 students to tend to in an 8-week class, I had students post their historical theses in the forums instead of on a closed essay exam. I graded them according to a qualitative scale that translated into points, and made comments on each directly in the forums, which took a great deal of time.
I was at first so very happy with this method, having spent much time setting it up so beautifully. Then the class was over, and I got the evaluation, completed by only 16 students.
Ignoring the typical one-person-who-hates-everything-I-do student, 5 felt class expectations weren’t stated clearly. A surprising 6 didn’t find the Contribution Assessments helpful (these contain direct feedback for each and every student, in private), and though 14 said they read my comments on their own mini-essays in the forum, 2 thought I wasn’t even present and visible during class. Some comments on the open essays said:
“It would be helpful if we received more feedback on our short essays instead of a general comments so that we could improve our writing skills.”
“For someone who struggles with the weekly thesis maybe a little more information but since it was a summer class it was face paced. I enjoyed the class the grading was fair just needed a better understanding of the thesis but that could just be me.”
“I think more feedback on the essays is necessary. The only kind of feedback that I received was if something was wrong with my essay, but it would be nice to know the things that I’m doing well so that I could continue incorporating things into the essays that worked well.”
“I wish there was more direction for the writing assignments. Especially the final assessment.”
It has thus occurred to me that the continual, extensive feedback I gave several times a week on the posted essays was not seen as actual feedback or guidance by some of the students.
Keep in mind before you say I’m justing whining, that I give this evaluation every semester, and the overwhelming majority say my expectations are clear, the assignments are helpful, and the things they recommend tend to be things like “more content” or “less work”. Keep in mind also that my public comments on their essays were very specific, but kind and designed not to embarrass anyone. I also marked some of them with a bold For Everyone tag in the subject line, to provide more general comments at the same time. I thought this was brilliant — evidently not so much.
I can’t help but wonder whether doing closed essay grading instead, even if I said the exact same thing on each essay, would have led to a different result. Is it possible that forum postings from the instructor aren’t seen as feedback in the same way we view a private comment on a quiz?
So for the class that starts Monday, I have put the essays back into a standard, private, midterm and final exam format, with (as usual) the practice in the forums. We’ll see what happens.
Lisa, I found this post very interesting. I had an experience once as a manager that made me realize that people do not always perceive things the way you want them too – and that sometimes you have to tell them what you are doing. I managed people in a call center. Every shift we trained the employees on how to handle different calls, what to do if scenarios and things to try in case a difficult situation came up. When I did employee reviews a large number complained there wasn’t enough training opportunities. We trained every day – but we called them briefs. When I spoke with the people and pointed out the briefs were training many were surprised to think of it that way. We started calling them training briefs and the issue of lack of training almost disappeared. I wonder if people in your class saw feedback and comments as different things…
Yes, good point – I will need to reframe. I did teach transparently, telling them what the feedback was for each week and how I was doing it, but I might need to make it even more explicit somehow…