Student-friendly, prof-friendly paper feedback?

[JFlanders]

Like everybody else, I spend a lot of time giving feedback on papers.  However, I'm haunted by a feeling that I don't fundamentally understand the point of comments from a student/audience perspective, and thus that I'm spinning my wheels without much payoff for anybody.

In the back of my head, feedback exists simultaneously for all of the following conflicting purposes:

• Transparent grading/justifying the grade
• Helping students improve
• Emotional management/ softening the impact of bad grades
• Making students feel their writing was "heard"
• Satisfying conventional expectations
• Performing my own work ethic/ signaling the importance of the assignment

Currently, I return 3-6-pp. papers with a very detailed, fully scored rubric, plus 1-2 inline comments per page, plus ~1 paragraph of overall comments at the end (that mostly duplicate the rubric).  This works toward #1, 4, 6 above, but possibly works against #2, 3, since students often seem to tl;dr the rubric and may not know what to focus on in the comments.  Longer comments and more detailed rubrics also seem to add to students' terrified sense that these assignments are "complicated".

On the other hand, I would love to write less, particularly in end comments or interlinear comments, but I don't want to run afoul of #4, making students feel I don't care/didn't carefully read their work, or #5, making students feel cheated of their due measure of feedback.  Etc. 

Has anyone successfully optimized their feedback format in a way that's feasible for the grader and reliably appreciated by the students?  What do they want to hear, what do they need to hear, and what am I OK to leave out?     

[Hegemony]

In my experience, they flick through the paper quickly, skim the comments, glance at the grade at the bottom, and stick the paper in their backpack, never to be looked at again.  To be honest, that's also what I did with my own papers, and I was a student who went on to a PhD, so I was probably in the top 10% of motivated students.

Very occasionally a student will come forward and say she didn't understand why her grade was so low.  To head that off, I make sure to comment on the weakest point of the paper: "There were some good ideas in here but I couldn't follow the structure of the argument, which made it hard to put it all together."  That might easily be 100% of the comments for one paper, except for circling random typos I spot.

I think probably you are devoting too much time to writing comments on papers. 

You could always ask your students what they find most helpful.  Then trim that back a bit, as none of them will admit "Well, I really don't care about the comments."

[writingprof]

A former colleague of mine had an ingenious system that I was never brave enough to mimic. If students wanted a full write-up with comments, grammar corrections, and suggestions, the deadline was "Day."  If students wanted a grade and a single paragraph of feedback at the end, the deadline was "Day +3."  If students merely wanted a grade, no comments, the deadline was "Day +6."  I'll let you guess what 95% of students chose.

Why have I never followed suit?  I'm too locked in to numbers 1, 5, and 6 at the beginning of this thread.  2 is nonsense, surely discredited by the educational theorists by now.  3 and 4 are the kind of postmodern gobbledygook that a good, long war would helpfully rid us of.  Get off my lawn.

[youllneverwalkalone]

A former colleague of mine had an ingenious system that I was never brave enough to mimic. If students wanted a full write-up with comments, grammar corrections, and suggestions, the deadline was "Day."  If students wanted a grade and a single paragraph of feedback at the end, the deadline was "Day +3."  If students merely wanted a grade, no comments, the deadline was "Day +6."  I'll let you guess what 95% of students chose.

Why have I never followed suit?  I'm too locked in to numbers 1, 5, and 6 at the beginning of this thread.  2 is nonsense, surely discredited by the educational theorists by now.  3 and 4 are the kind of postmodern gobbledygook that a good, long war would helpfully rid us of.  Get off my lawn.

You don't think feedback help students improve? Care to elaborate?

[writingprof]

A former colleague of mine had an ingenious system that I was never brave enough to mimic. If students wanted a full write-up with comments, grammar corrections, and suggestions, the deadline was "Day."  If students wanted a grade and a single paragraph of feedback at the end, the deadline was "Day +3."  If students merely wanted a grade, no comments, the deadline was "Day +6."  I'll let you guess what 95% of students chose.

Why have I never followed suit?  I'm too locked in to numbers 1, 5, and 6 at the beginning of this thread.  2 is nonsense, surely discredited by the educational theorists by now.  3 and 4 are the kind of postmodern gobbledygook that a good, long war would helpfully rid us of.  Get off my lawn.

You don't think feedback help students improve? Care to elaborate?

That's a bit too broad a declaration. I don't think grammar corrections and admonitory marginalia improve student writing, for the simple reason that I don't believe students read it with any seriousness.

[MaterialIssue]

Students may not read comments or take suggestions, but part of our job is to get them to want to. Track changes in Word or the suggestion function in google docs can be useful as they track when students have read and resolved comments and edits. You can also find ways in the grading to incentivize revision. The first is to scaffold writing so that they are getting feedback before a final draft or version. I also like to have proposals, drafts, outlines, etc. count for full credit if turned in on time and explaining at length how editing and revision are essential to effective thinking and writing. Ultimately, it is crucial for the whole of the class to work in concert and to make clear how taking and giving feedback are part of that process.

[writingprof]

Track changes in Word or the suggestion function in google docs can be useful as they track when students have read and resolved comments and edits.

On the contrary, they merely track when students have resolved comments and edits.  Reading them is not required.  Learning from them certainly isn't.  Or is mine the only version of Word with an "accept all changes" button?

But, seriously, you sound like an excellent teacher.  God bless you.

[youllneverwalkalone]

Track changes in Word or the suggestion function in google docs can be useful as they track when students have read and resolved comments and edits.

On the contrary, they merely track when students have resolved comments and edits.  Reading them is not required.  Learning from them certainly isn't.  Or is mine the only version of Word with an "accept all changes" button?

Maybe so but it's disingenuous to assume that all or even most students would do that. The real question is how many of them actually read/address the comments, is it only the "good ones" who do that, and to what extent they learn from such feedbacks. I don't have any answer but the higher ed literature is probably a better source than personal experience in this case.

[polly_mer]

Students may not read comments or take suggestions, but part of our job is to get them to want to. Track changes in Word or the suggestion function in google docs can be useful as they track when students have read and resolved comments and edits. You can also find ways in the grading to incentivize revision. The first is to scaffold writing so that they are getting feedback before a final draft or version. I also like to have proposals, drafts, outlines, etc. count for full credit if turned in on time and explaining at length how editing and revision are essential to effective thinking and writing. Ultimately, it is crucial for the whole of the class to work in concert and to make clear how taking and giving feedback are part of that process.

The only way I managed to get students to incorporate feedback was substantial scaffolding all term with grades for subsequent revisions heavily weighted towards incorporating feedback.

I eventually dropped the final paper in some of my classes because I just couldn't face doing the three rounds of revision during the semester any more.  I was also disheartened by how frequently the first drafts required a report for plagiarism or a huge penalty for completely failing to include any references in a research paper.

Oh, and I was also tired of all the student complaints that (1) my STEM classes were not supposed to be writing classes and (2) I was requiring far too much effort for a 100/200-level class.  When I became in charge of assessment, I learned that the students were correct that literally no other intro level classes required that much revision, including a freshman comp class titled "The Research Paper".  Huh, I wonder why our juniors kept failing the mandatory-for-graduation writing exam on the first go.

[0susanna]

When I became in charge of assessment, I learned that the students were correct that literally no other intro level classes required that much revision, including a freshman comp class titled "The Research Paper".  Huh, I wonder why our juniors kept failing the mandatory-for-graduation writing exam on the first go.

I so hope that, as the person in charge of assessment, you found a way to change that situation? We're dealing with similar issues at my university.

[JFlanders]

Successive revisions of major papers produce better writing, but is there any evidence they make students better writers? 

My students will grudgingly make a few concrete changes if I specify them very clearly, but I see no signs that they are using them to improve their overall writing practices.  If anything, having the safety net of the teacher's revision notes seems to encourage them to really blow off the first drafts.

[professor_pat]

If anything, having the safety net of the teacher's revision notes seems to encourage them to really blow off the first drafts.

I used to use a standard framework that limited the amount of additional grade increase that a student could get through revision, based on the initial grade. For instance, with an initial grade of 78%, the student could earn up to (say) 10% more with an excellent revision. Initial grade of 85 --> 5% more. Initial grade of 95 --> 3% more. [Just making these up since I don't have the chart in front of me. Let me know if you want the detailed version.]

That provided good incentive to work hard on the first draft, while still giving real room for improvement.

I also offered two due dates, along WritingProf's approach but simpler: Date 1 with revision option, Date 1+a week with no revision option.

[writingprof]

In twenty years of teaching, I have never seen a bad writer show meaningful improvement.  Neither have my colleagues.  We talk about it all the time.  I suppose it's possible that we're all just bad teachers, but my own theory is that our students have never read a book in their lives, came of age well after grammar had been de-emphasized in elementary schools for political reasons, and know perfectly well that we can't fail them all. 

[polly_mer]

When I became in charge of assessment, I learned that the students were correct that literally no other intro level classes required that much revision, including a freshman comp class titled "The Research Paper".  Huh, I wonder why our juniors kept failing the mandatory-for-graduation writing exam on the first go.

I so hope that, as the person in charge of assessment, you found a way to change that situation? We're dealing with similar issues at my university.

We tried. 

We spent a year renovating the freshman comp required sequence under a new Rhetoric and Composition Director who was hired specifically due to substantial experience in modern methods of teaching and expectations.  We spent that year hammering out details with all the faculty who would teach in that sequence in the room discussing what parts of the syllabus would be common, what the true goals for each course would be to fit what had been a three-term sequence into two terms, and how to ensure students were getting enough practice and feedback.

The roll-out year was a very painful year all around as a handful of tenured faculty flat out refused to teach the new courses as assigned, but continued to teach the old courses in sections labeled with new numbers.  Cries of academic freedom were raised to be countered with charges of insubordination for not teaching the assigned courses, but instead teaching something else that could not meet the stated outcomes for the assigned course.

The next year, tenured faculty who had refused to get with the program (and remember they had had substantial input into the new curriculum) were assigned administrative special projects instead of being allowed to continue to shortchange students in the freshman comp sequence.  We hired VAPs and drew on some writing center folks who really wanted to teach in the new program to do the second year.

We added an earlier writing proficiency exam, administered and graded by those who were not teaching in freshman comp, to the freshman comp sequence.  Students who passed the new freshman comp sequence tended to do much better on the writing proficiency exam.  Passing grades in freshman comp now tended to correlate with passing the writing proficiency exam, unlike before when an A in freshman comp taught by certain professors indicated no better than random chance in passing the writing proficiency exam.

In twenty years of teaching, I have never seen a bad writer show meaningful improvement.  Neither have my colleagues.  We talk about it all the time.  I suppose it's possible that we're all just bad teachers, but my own theory is that our students have never read a book in their lives, came of age well after grammar had been de-emphasized in elementary schools for political reasons, and know perfectly well that we can't fail them all. 

In my STEM experience, people become better writers when they have something about which they really want to write and feel a true need to communicate.  Over two years, master's students tend to improve in ways that undergrads just completing required assignments seldom do.

[dr_codex]

In my STEM experience, people become better writers when they have something about which they really want to write and feel a true need to communicate.  Over two years, master's students tend to improve in ways that undergrads just completing required assignments seldom do.

^ This. Times 10,000.

It isn't just for grad students, but yes, yes, yes.

Ask me why our Writing for [STEM] class is a failure, when it's offered in the Freshman year and not just before/alongside the Senior Design Project?

Ask me why our students "forget" everything from their intense First Year Writing sequence, once they are in the Senior year of any discipline?

For that matter, ask me why I remember almost nothing from my required Biblio I & II classes as a grad student, but learned everything when trying to format/edit/cite my "REAL" papers and theses? I was also one of those Ph.D.-bound students, who learned almost .... {I was going to edit this, but I think I'll leave it unfinished. QED.}

You know who gets my students to write clearly? The Navy officers on record, who insist that reports be clear and unambiguous. They send the reports from junior officers back until they are clear. Get it Right or Stay Up All Night.

The other times that my students really pay attention is on their resumes at job fairs, and their cover letters. They won't do a good job on either genre, as an academic exercise, but they'll be meticulous for applications.

The only way that I've managed to motivate students in "exercise mode" is to present it as a low-stakes chance to work out some issues. Presentations are a good one, as are first attempts at programming/graphic design projects for non-specialists. Students seem to grasp that doing these things well takes discipline, talent, and flair; they don't seem to ascribe the same qualities to math problems and sentence writing. If I can nudge them out of the kinds of things that they think they should have learned in middle school (read a story? write a paragraph? ask a question? really?), then they might take the task more seriously. But to do anything well, they have to care about the result.