Ask the CTL Scholar: Getting Students to Use Instructor Feedback

Lia Daniels

Transcript

[0:00] Cosette: Hi, I'm Cosette Lemelin, Associate Director at the Centre for Teaching and Learning. This afternoon I'm sitting down with a special guest, our CTL Scholar Lia Daniels. Lia, tell us a little bit about the kind of work you do.

[0:14] Lia: Hi Cosette, thanks so much for having me here today and for these CTL Scholar roles which have been really fun over the last six months. So, I'm a professor of educational psychology and my research—for actually almost 20 years—has been on student and teacher motivation, and in the last five years I've made a really strong pivot towards thinking about motivation and student and instructor wellness, specifically as it pertains to classroom assessment. And I think that is some of the conversation we're going to have here today.

[0:51] Cosette: Yeah, I was looking forward to our conversation. Instructors invest a lot of time and energy and care in providing assignment feedback, feedback on papers, and so a question that we're commonly asked is, "How can I make sure that students implement the feedback I give them?"

[1:12] Lia: Yeah, that is a great question, Cosette, and you're absolutely right. The evidence on the importance of feedback to support student learning is probably one of the most consistent pieces of evidence we have in education. So it's a good question. It's one we absolutely need to discuss, but I want to tweak it a little bit from a motivation perspective because the notion that we can make sure students do something is actually quite controlling and that's not the type of motivation I like to lean into. So the question I like to ask is, "How can we create conditions that will allow students to use the feedback that we as instructors view as so important in supporting their development, and their improvement, and their growth in learning?" So it's less about making sure that students implement some specific piece of feedback and more about creating those conditions that make implementation actually the very best option for students.

[2:12] Cosette: That said, I think most instructors that I would talk to have a story or an example of when they handed back papers in class, often at the end of class, and when they handed back the papers the students just flipped to the last page, looked at the grade, and stuffed those papers into their backpacks and moved on.

[2:35] Lia: Yeah, and that's so demoralizing for instructors, right? We've put so much time and care into thinking about what that feedback is and wanting it to be of benefit for students. And so oftentimes instructors are scoring into the into the wee hours of the night, rushing to try and get students their scores and the important comments that come alongside them. And so then, yeah, it can be really discouraging to have students kind of disregard that particular type of feedback and approach, which is why—I would again say—that if we put all this time in as instructors, then one of the additional things we can do to help convey that to students is say, "No, no, no, I'm not giving this back right at the end of class. I'm giving it back now at the start of class or the middle of class. And I don't want you to tuck it into your backpack. I want you to look at it here in class time. These things matter enough that I'm not going to let you just shove it into your backpack. I'm going to carve out time because I believe that having you look at your feedback and make a plan about how you might use it is actually a really valuable and legitimate use of class time." It's also a little risky though, Cosette, because it means that your students are looking at their scores and their comments while you're still standing in the room.

[3:58] Cosette: Yeah, I have often said to my own students, "Take a look at the papers, but I won't talk about the grade until a couple of days later or a week later" to have that cooling off period where they're not quite so upset or focused on the grade.

[4:17] Lia: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great practice. I think we probably see it all over the place, in part because, you know, so assessment and feedback in particular, like these are highly emotional moments. So, they're emotional for our students. They're just getting good news, bad news, they're disappointed, they're excited, whatever it is. But they're also emotional for us as instructors. Like we said, we've just put in a lot of care and effort. We might be disappointed in our students or in our own instruction. We might be thrilled. We might be frustrated. And so I do think it is a little bit higher risk for an instructor to say, "We're going to work through some of this here today", and not feel like maybe they're going to end up with a lineup down the hallway of people wanting to complain at them. So one of the things I'd suggest in that type of situation is to actually think about how you can scaffold a meaningful engagement for students with your feedback. So instead of just saying, "Look at it", have an actual question to help guide them through their feedback: "What's the most consistent comment that you're seeing here? What is one thing that in this feedback can be useful moving forward? If you didn't perform as well as you would like, what study strategies did you use before this test? And how might you think about a different set of study strategies before our next test?"

One of the really important things to distinguish is that although it's feedback, which encourages students to then think about the current paper that they just got back, what we're trying to do as instructors is get them to think forward. We're trying to get them to think about the next assessment, the next time they're going to have a chance to do this better, or continue to do it not so well. And so trying to orient them to that next performance opportunity through the feedback can be really helpful in trying to prevent that great big long lineup. You could even go so far as saying something like, you know, "If you want to come and talk to me about your previous grade, I want to hear a couple things that you have in mind for how you're going to improve on your next assignment".

[6:28] Cosette: So I'm hearing even when instructors are preparing the feedback, looking at the papers, they should be thinking about what is the most useful feedback for the students for the next paper, the next assignment, the next course in the program. There's a real itch to provide feedback on everything.

[6:47] Lia: Yeah, of course there is, because we want our students to do well in all things, right? But not every piece of an assignment actually has to be your responsibility as an instructor. So this one will be contentious with listeners, but for example, it doesn't have to bother you that there might be some spelling mistakes. You don't have to fix all the spelling mistakes or fix all the commas. If you're teaching writing, you definitely do. If the language impedes the ideas that students are trying to present, then that's an important spot. But if you find yourself in a place where you're like, "This is neat", or "Did you think about it this way?", or just sort of those generalized comments that we're so used to making, then it's not necessarily unfair that students don't use that feedback. It's like nice to have feedback instead of need to have feedback. And so yes, if instructors can spend a couple of minutes before they start down that path to think about what are the things I want my students to take from this piece of learning that will set them into a better spot for the next piece of learning and think about how to craft their comments and their feedback sort of around some of those things, I do think students will attend differently and potentially instructors may have a slightly better experience because they're not feeling like they're carrying everything in this assignment.

[8:14] Cosette: They're not responsible for absolutely everything in that student's assignment...okay, because really only a student can only take away so much feedback and carry it forward.

[8:25] Lia: Yeah, I think so. And so we want to try and point them towards those things. And arguably one or two pieces of really forward-thinking feedback that changes your behavior can carry you much further than trying to make sense of every comment that happens to be on a piece of work.

[8:42] Cosette: Anything else that you would like to tell us about providing feedback to students?

[8:49] Lia: I think I would just mention that feedback is very consequential to students. All things grading and assessment are meaningful to students and so the recognition that these things have consequences in their life is really important and that they can feel discouraged or excited or proud. Those things also can't just be sort of tucked into a backpack and so making some space to recognize that, you know, the student who's coming to talk to you who wants their grade improved isn't just there to get their their grade improved. Most students do still really want to learn and benefit from feedback, so giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and recognizing that there's a lot of feelings and expectations attached to these processes is probably good for both parties.

[9:41] Cosette: Yeah, feelings for both sides.

[9:43] Lia: For both sides.

[9:44] Cosette: For both sides.

[9:45] Lia: Absolutely.

[9:46] Cosette: Thank you for talking to us today, Lia. It's been a pleasure

[9:49] Lia: Yeah, me too.