Feedback is one of the most valuable tools available to instructors, designers, and students. When students invest their time and creativity in an assignment, instructor feedback provides them an opportunity to know what they excelled in, as well as what still needs improvement. Authentic feedback between an instructor and student creates a conversation that is conducive to learning and growing. Similarly, after countless hours are spent designing a curriculum and developing a course--whether online, on-site, or a hybrid of the two--feedback provides instructors a path to continue improving the course for an impactful student experience. When we bring students into the conversation by requesting their feedback on specific elements of a course, we have the opportunity to showcase more diverse backgrounds and voices, employ current applications and content, and establish an environment that makes students feel valued and heard. This article explores how to create space for feedback, what...

Do you feel frustrated when assignments are submitted that are lacking important criteria? Do you have several people grading and want to maintain consistency and fairness? Are you wishing to provide more feedback to students, to help them improve their skills? Answers to these questions can be targeted by building effective analytic rubrics.  In a recent webinar, I shared how to build effective analytic rubrics, including what they are and why you should use them. Understanding the what, why, and how will help you to determine where to start when creating effective rubrics for your course. Let's begin! What is a rubric? A rubric is “...a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor" ( Reddy and Andrade, 2010 ). Typically comprised of rows and columns, where the rows are used to define the various criteria being used to assess an assignment. And the columns are used ...

As instructors, we’re all looking to help our students deepen their learning in ways that make the content “stick,” or in other words, make it memorable and meaningful. Cognitive and educational scientists have discovered that strategies such as reflection, retrieval practice (opportunities to recall content), making predictions/hypotheses, and other active learning strategies can have a significant impact on the depth and durability of student learning (Lang, 2016 and Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014) but there are practical barriers to implementing these strategies. For instance, how can you confirm which students completed the activities? How can you find time in-class or out-of-class to collect and grade these activities? How can you get students to do these activities ? Fortunately, ASU faculty already have a free and easy-to-use tool to promote these types of non-punitive learning activities that requires no grading time or class time by instructors, and as an added...

Feedback takes many forms.  This week's Teach Talk webinar focused on the gathering of feedback from your students as well as colleagues, to enhance the overall learning experience.  Sarah Prosory , Instructional Designer in the School of Life Sciences, shared  different techniques that can be used to gather feedback, and why you should ask a colleague for feedback about your course.  Enhance Learning There are many reasons to gather feedback from students, with a few being: checking for their understanding of a topic, generating ideas, and discovering concerns or issues so you can find a solution. Student engagement occurs as well, when students are asked about their learning.  Adult learners especially like to feel they are a part of their learning. By asking them about teaching or classroom activities, students will feel more included in how the course continues. This leads to better engagement, and can create a feedback loop in which students can comfort...

Are you finding that you're repeatedly asking your students to attend office hours, but still see low attendance? You are not alone. Office hours are often conducted in-person, on a scheduled day and time that the instructor is available. Typically these hours are posted online and in the syllabus. Yet, most students do not attend. Below are some options to try, that may encourage more students to attend your office hours! Have you tried virtual office hours?  This option does not have to be for online courses only. To do this you can use Zoom, and link it to your Canvas course. Instructors who have tried virtual office hours have been impressed with more students attending. This could simply be because students were unable to make it to campus on the scheduled day/time for office hours, but instead could join virtually. Here are some instructions to get you started (requires ASURITE log-in). Share a funny video with students about office hours. Another option to con...

This week's TeachT@lk Webinar focused on our summer theme of "Feedback" . This time we talked about the different ways to deliver feedback. We started by discussing the ideal situation to give both effective and convenient feedback to students. Then we looked at each of these modes of delivery and discussed the benefits and challenges.    We gave some best practices for using video, and combining it with text. Jason Neenos from UTO demonstrated three technologies that could be used for sharing feedback in both recorded and live sessions. All are free for ASU Faculty: SnagIt Video Demo - goo Adobe Connect Info Page Google Hangouts Tutorial Video As always, there was lots of lively sharing of ideas and discussions, and we ended with a great case study showing how video made a difference to one writing student. Join us again on September 19 for "Get Active!" where we'll share some innovations from the International Forum on Active Learning Class...

In Tuesday's webinar, we focused on using feedback as a teaching device. Yuna Buhrman, from the ASU College of Health Solutions, shared a survey that she did on student and faculty perceptions of feedback. This survey contained many insightful comments and tips for faculty to take back to their own classrooms. We worked to better define feedback and the difference between formal and informal feedback, as well as "how" and "when" to use them. We also shared the 3 components of good feedback: Making it relevant by connecting it to the objectives and goals of the student Making it specific by providing examples of how to improve, or validating what was done well. Making it timely by using auto feedback for quick responses, combined with opportunities for individual feedback within a few days.  The webinar ended with tips for using peer feedback, and some of the typical challenges and possible solutions. Below are the resources that were shared with part...