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“Flipping Feedback: Screencasting Feedback on Student Essays.”

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“Flipping Feedback: Screencasting Feedback on Student Essays.”

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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Last semester I was faced with a larger-than-usual senior composition class for English majors-which of course also meant a larger-than-usual feedback load. With a new baby at home, I was more than a little concerned about finding the time to do it all. Fully aware of the research (e.g. Ferris, 1997; Hyland & Hyland, 2006) that favors more detailed feedback on student writing (seems "awkward: reword" just doesn't cut it), I could not in good conscience consider reducing the quality or quantity of the feedback I usually give. Moreover, my feedback would typically include holding "writing conferences" (one-on-one consultations) with students-usually during office hours. But this was a big class, and there are just so many hours in a day.

I knew something had to give.

Having already tested the limits of the physical word, I turned to the virtual one. I had learned anecdotally of professors who sent audio podcasts of their feedback along with their written feedback, which seemed like a nifty idea. But, I thought, what if students could actually watch and hear me in a video as I go over their papers? If possible (which it is), that would approximate the kind of feedback experience I aimed to offer students without constraining it to a particular time or location.

Screencasting (recording and narrating actions performed by the instructor on a computer screen) did that and much more for me and my students. Below I describe the process and the resulting benefits.
Which software did I use?
After looking around a bit, I settled on using Screencast-O-Matic installed on my PC computer, but I know that Quicktime and other packages can work just as well.
What was the feedback process?
Students would submit their completed take-home writing assignments electronically. Especially for shorter assignments (e.g. fewer than three pages), I would only briefly skim over the text, and then launch Screencast-O-Matic to record my feedback in real time. In other words, students would see all highlighting, corrections, or suggested changes happen as I was making them on their Word documents. In effect, students would hear me "dialoguing" with them as I narrated what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what I was thinking throughout the feedback process. I would then return the marked-up document to students via email, along with a link to the (private) YouTube upload. To understand the written feedback, students would need to watch the video. For demonstration purposes, I created this short screencast of me providing feedback on a fictitious paper: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSZhNWCwSjA])
What did the students do with the feedback?
I recorded screencasts for all first drafts, and students were then required to submit a second draft. And that's where the flipped part comes in. In most cases students would watch the screencasts before class, sometimes attempting a redraft at home, other times waiting to come to class to ask follow-up questions. On other occasions, particularly with feedback on longer essays, I was unable to get the screencasts back to students until just the night before class ( Did I mention we have a new baby at home?), in which case the students would actually watch their videos at the outset of class on their various devices (kind of like having multiple versions of me talking to the students simultaneously about their papers), followed by in-class re-drafting.
What were some positive takeaways from the whole exercise?
Screencasting did more than simply allow me to maintain my usual feedback standards: in some respects, the virtual feedback was arguably better than my in-person (i.e. writing conference) feedback. For example, this particular class was comprised entirely of non-native speakers of English, thus potentially reducing the effectiveness of in-person conferences due to oral comprehension issues. By contrast, the screencast feedback could be played, paused, and re-played by students as often and as many times as they wished.

Another unexpected plus came from the "flipping"-particularly the in-class redrafting. What started as a kind of stop-gap measure because of late-night, last-minute feedback (i.e. students viewing the screencasts to start the class) eventually emerged as a dynamic activity that made class time more productive and student-centered. (And this was noticed by students too, as revealed in both mid-course and end-of-semester class surveys).
Anything negative?
It would be disingenuous to suggest that screencasting was a time-saver. It wasn't. In some cases the screencasting took about as much time as I would normally expend giving just written feedback; on other occasions-longer papers in particular-the reading followed by oral commentary involved much more time than one would expect to spend if just writing in the margins of a student's essay. But then "just writing in the margins" was never the point of giving screencasting a try in the first place.

References:
Ferris, D. (1997). The influence of teacher commentary on student revision. TESOL Quarterly, 31(2), 315-339.

Hyland, K., & Hyland, F. (2006). Interpersonal aspects of response: Constructing and interpreting teacher written feedback. Feedback in second language writing: Contexts and issues, 206-224.
Ron Martinez has taught language and language learning at a number of universities, including the University of Oxford and San Francisco State University. He is currently an assistant professor of English at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba, Brazil, where he also heads a research group focusing on the challenges faced by Brazilian scientists who need to publish their work in English.

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Screencasting Feedback on Student Essays

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Last semester I was faced with a larger-than-usual senior composition class for English majors-which of course also meant a larger-than-usual feedback load. With a new baby at home, I was more than a little concerned about finding the time to do it all. Fully aware of the research (e.g.

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“Tips for Grading and Giving Students Feedback.” 

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“Tips for Grading and Giving Students Feedback.” 

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The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, 'Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers. In this chapter, titled, "Tips for Dealing with the Grading and Feedback Masses," I provide an insight into my own grade book and give advice on how to cut down on the stack of papers and assignments while still giving effective feedback to students.

I don't know how your desk looks after your classes hand things in, but mine looks like a mountain range of stacks. In fact, I need to launch an expedition just to reach the top of the piles in order to grade them by deadline. Think about it: 36-42 kids per class, 6 periods a day, maybe 3 assignments per week. How does a new or veteran teacher handle the hours of grading that can amount to a second full-time job?

And as our class sizes increase, something's gotta give. The key is to provide feedback in different formats. It keeps students alert to your message, and it keeps you from going out of your mind. Here are just some tips, some old, some new, to help you towards your own grading sanity:

1. Use Rubrics for Preemptive feedback: After watching my three-year-old son one day attempt a thorough teeth-brushing session, I jokingly said, "I definitely give that a B at best." He paused. "What's best?" he asked.

I won't bore you with my description of tooth brushing excellence. However, I will say that it got me thinking that many students don't know how to ask this question. Which brings me to rubrics. Rubrics aren't just about summative feedback, "Here's how you did," they are also a sort of preemptive feedback, "Here's what you need to do."

2. Only focus feedback on one skill - Think about it from a student's point of view: it makes a greater impact and is less defeating to see specific notes on a single topic then to see the explosion of pen critiquing every past lesson missed.

3. Only focus feedback on one part of the assignment - Only comment on the first paragraph or only the first 5 questions of an assignment. Better yet, allow a student to choose the section or numbers they feel best represent their comprehension.

4. Rotate students to give deeper feedback to - Sure each student turns in the assignment, but do you really need to focus as intently on all 200 of them equitably every time? Rotate groups of students that get more percentage of your attention.

5. Train students to give feedback to each other - Teach the students to give the first wave of feedback to each other. This saves you from having to repeatedly write the same basic comments that could have been easily caught by a peer.

6. "Comment rather than correct" - Carol Jago reminds us that it's the students job to correct their errors. In fact, it would be even more powerful for them to identify the errors in the first place using hints provided by you:

In your essay, I see (general mistake) appear X-amount of times.In your history project, I see two date errors.In your math assignment, I see three equations that do not add up.

7. Create a key of feedback symbols - Identify the most common errors that you predict you will see. Develop a key of symbols that you can use in the margins instead of writing in sentences or bullets. This will require students to translate as well, which embeds the lesson even further.

8. Outsource the grading - Sometimes, assignments will take a huge leap in quality when students think someone other than their own teacher is seeing them. Ask administrators to get involved, switch stacks with other teachers, assign your other periods to evaluate the work. Outsource occasionally, and you just might find the students stepping up their work.

9. Keep them in suspense - Keep the final grade of an assignment as a carrot dangling until the feedback is read, attempted, and proven. Make them solve some of the problems in the assignment based on your feedback, and trade their solutions for access to their score.

10. Feedback Note-taking - If the one who does the work is doing the learning, should not the student be the one writing down the feedback? You conference; they write.

11. Stagger due dates for your classes. There is no rule that says all 200 shoeboxes or flipbooks have to show up at your door on the same date.

12. And while you're at it, give them a way to give feedback to you. If they believe that you are reading their feedback, they will be more likely to read yours. Develop a survey, via hard copy or one on surveymonkey.com, for them to fill out at the end of a unit, quarter, semester, whatever. Ask them what worked and what didn't. Model your own comfort at criticism and they will work harder at their own.

The unabridged chapter includes more in-depth advice as well as templates and surveys to help you navigate through the mountains of grading that can weigh down a teacher both in the classroom and at home. The book is available at the Web site Eye on Eye Education Publishing and will be available at Amazon on March 15.

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Tips for Grading and Giving Students Feedback | Edutopia

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The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, 'Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers. In this chapter, titled, "Tips for Dealing with the Grading and Feedback Masses," I provide an insight into my own grade book and give advice on how to cut down on the stack of papers and assignments while still giving effective feedback to students.

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“Making Assessment and Feedback Earn Their Keep.” 

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“Making Assessment and Feedback Earn Their Keep.” 

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Ask any academic what the most challenging part of their job is and chances are that many of them will mention assessment. It's one of the most important things that we do in our role as teachers, and it's perhaps the central mechanism through which we engage students fully in their own learning. But it raises a lot of difficult issues. What's the best way to assess students? How do we ensure that our systems are sensible and manageable both for us and for our students? How do we ensure that we mark fairly and equitably? And how do we manage the burden of large numbers of students? These are big questions and I was glad of the advice and support that Sally Brown had to offer when she came to the University last month to lead a workshop on assessment.

For Sally the student is the driving force behind the quest for high quality assessment. She described assessments as being like punctuation marks for students because they give rhythm and structure to the work that they do for any course. And they chase grades like money. All of this means that students need to see the value in what they're doing if they are to engage more fully with the assessment process. So what practical things can we do to ensure that students do see the value in what they are doing?

Well, there are a number of quite small but very effective steps that we can take. Given that many students in first year drop out after the first 6-7 weeks, Sally suggested the need for an early first assessment. This should be designed so that it is something that the students will pass. We don't want them to feel out of their depth and as if they don't know what they're doing. Rather, we want to let the students know how they are doing and give them the confidence that they've got what it takes to be at university.

And this links to questions about what students actually do with feedback. In an ideal world we'd like feedback to be a transformative experience, something that students can use to change their practice and improve their performance. As Sally put it, feedback needs to earn its keep. But does it? Here she suggested that it is actually formative assessment - where students get feedback that helps them to improve on their work and do better - that is the most crucial. But students are often driven by summative assessment, after all the marks are what they care about, such that there is a need for us to work much harder to convince the students that they should take formative assessment seriously. And this, of course, raises strategic questions about the structure and timing of feedback. Students make most use of feedback when it's quick and when they can use it to help them prepare for the next assignment. Interestingly, Sally suggested that we ought to rethink giving feedback on the assignments that final year students submit because they won't be using it to prepare for any future assignments. An immediate lightening of what we sometimes see as the burden of assessment.

Sally also argued that we need to make sure that our students are not confused about assessment. Learning outcomes, assessment criteria and written feedback are often not enough. There needs to be dialogue too because this brings assessment and feedback to life. Building on the work of Royce Sadler, she suggested that one way to help students understand the required quality of the piece of work they're doing is to let them see lots of previous assessments. Give them the stunning ones and talk with the students about what makes them so good. And, of course, that dialogue builds a shared understanding of standards, and the students need this is they are to trust the judgements that we make about their work.

The last part of the workshop focused on some very practical things we can do to ensure that feedback is just, fair, validated and given due accord. Marking schemes are a useful tool to help people make sensible decisions about marks. Giving oral feedback to the class as a whole is a really quick and effective way to summarise key take home messages - and Sally illustrated this beautifully in the workshop itself. A generic written report, covering similar points, examples of good practice, common errors and additional reading, is another quick way to give high quality feedback. Though with this Sally warned that it was really important to brief the students so that they would take it seriously. Writing a range of model answers is also a good strategy especially for first years because it helps them to understand the quality of work expected of them. And, it's better to show students something that's good than simply to talk about what makes a first class essay. Another possibility is to annotate students' work using a 'statement bank'. Sally suggested that we all have 'stock phrases' that we rely on quite heavily when marking. So why not make them into a statement bank - hers runs to around 70 phrases - and paste these on to the students' assignments? Simple and effective. There are lots of things we can do. Some will work for us, some might not, but Sally suggestion is 'just do it'!

I was struck by a very astute point that Sally made part way through the workshop. Drawing on David Boud's work she quipped that students can avoid bad teaching but they can't avoid bad assessment. As she so capably demonstrated during the workshop there are many things we can do if we are to make feedback earn its keep and be a truly transformative process for our students.

About Sally Brown

Sally Brown is Emerita Professor at Leeds Metropolitan University and was until July 2010 PVC (Academic). She is widely published, largely in the field of teaching, learning and assessment. She is an independent consultant and workshop facilitator who offers keynote addresses at conferences and events in the UK and internationally.

About the author

Hazel Christie is Lecturer in the Institute for Academic Development, University Of Edinburgh, and Programme Director of the PG Certificate in Academic Practice.

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Making assessment and feedback earn their keep

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Ask any academic what the most challenging part of their job is and chances are that many of them will mention assessment. It's one of the most important things that we do in our role as teachers, and it's perhaps the central mechanism through which we engage students fully in their own learning.

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“Five Principles for Formative Assessments that Fuel Feedback

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“Five Principles for Formative Assessments that Fuel Feedback

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Five Principles for Formative Assessments That Fuel Feedback

Tim Westerberg

Formative assessments provide the feedback on student learning that guides teacher and student adjustments during learning. If teachers want the information gathered by these formative tools to have the most impact on student learning, they must design classroom assessments with these five principles in mind:

1. Target key subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge (building blocks) in the learning progression. James Popham recommends identifying the key building blocks in a learning progression to target instruction at those foundational skills and bodies of knowledge. If the "big picture" curricular goal in a history class is to develop a well-crafted argumentative essay on whether or not the Bush administration planned to go to war against Saddam Hussein before the attack on the World Trade Center, students will need content knowledge about the first gulf war and skills in organizing content before formulating their essays. Once a particular subskill or body of knowledge has been identified as essential to success, don't move forward until students have demonstrated mastery. Classroom formative assessment will provide evidence of mastery.

2. Target those concepts and skills with which students typically experience difficulty or harbor misconceptions about. Experienced teachers can often predict the points in the learning progression at which students typically experience difficulty or misconceptions. For example, students (and adults) often think mass and weight are the same thing. Teachers will need to clarify this misconception before the 3rd grade science unit on measurement progresses very far. It is only prudent to profit from experience and plan formative assessment tasks to confirm or refute such predictions before moving on.

3. Align with the content provided in related classroom and common summative assessments. Skills and concepts taught and assessed at the classroom level must align with what is assessed by state common assessments (e.g., PARCC, SBAC, Iowa Assessments, Florida State Assessments). For students to perform well on state assessments, classroom assessments must sample content from them.

4. Align with the levels of cognitive rigor featured in summative assessments. Classroom assessments provide meaningful feedback when they not only produces evidence of student knowledge and performance, but also evidence that students can function at the level of cognitive complexity expected on later, summative assessments. Therefore, formative assessment tasks must include the levels of cognitive complexity students will see later on. It is important to remember that cognitive complexity is not the same as task difficulty. Webb's Depth of Knowledge instrument is an excellent tool for evaluating the cognitive complexity of classroom formative (and summative) assessments. Invite teachers to bring a typical classroom summative assessment and related package of formative assessments to a professional learning community session for collaborative analyses of cognitive rigor that use Webb's tool. If the group determines classroom assessments fall short of state or local expectations, the tool will help guide revisions.

5. Mirror the item formats included in summative assessments. The validity of assessment results are eroded when students miss items because of a lack of familiarity with assessment formats rather than lack of content knowledge or skill. Therefore, assessment format training is probably the only strictly test-prep instruction that is defensible. For example, if the state summative assessment requires students to utilize specific computer applications (drag and drop, highlighting, drawing evidence from multiple resources, constructing graphs, etc.), classroom formative assessments should do so, as well.

Not all feedback results in improved student learning. Feedback that affects learning is planned in alignment with these research-based guidelines for effectiveness. Additionally, when planning teacher training on effective feedback, be sure to not only model these processes for effective feedback, but also consider the prerequisite skills teachers will need to design effective feedback systems. For example, teachers may need guidance on developing learning progressions, determining the cognitive complexity of standards and assessments, or constructing valid and reliable classroom assessments. All of these play a role in determining the quality of feedback teachers get on classroom learning.

Tim Westerberg is a former high school principal of 26 years and a current school improvement coach and author of Becoming a Great High School: Six Strategies and One Attitude That Make a Difference (ASCD, 2009). His website is timwesterberg.com.

ASCD Express, Vol. 10, No. 19. Copyright 2015 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.

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ASCD Express 10.19 - Five Principles for Formative Assessments That Fuel Feedback

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Five Principles for Formative Assessments That Fuel Feedback Tim Westerberg Formative assessments provide the feedback on student learning that guides teacher and student adjustments during learning. If teachers want the information gathered by these formative tools to have the most impact on student learning, they must design classroom assessments with these five principles in mind: Target key subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge (building blocks) in the learning progression.

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Classroom Feedback Strategies Learning Guide

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Classroom Feedback Strategies Learning Guide

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