Feedback

As a graduate student, feedback was one of those things I didn’t care about getting until I actually stopped getting it. To be honest, a letter grade and an adjective has begun to make me feel like:

a) the instructor has skimmed my work, and is now assigning the prerequisite grade because it needs to be entered into the system
b) the process of taking courses is to get enough credits to enter into the system, then carry on with the real work (the research and the thesis)

As an instructional designer, I am aware of the pedagogical reasons why feedback is important, but understand that it is difficult for instructors to undertake. Providing feedback that is constructive and not ego damaging takes an incredible amount of precious time–and, lets face it, many instructors love the teaching part of instruction but loathe the assessment part.

I was happy to find this reference because I think it provides a simple, well presented set of suggestions for providing feedback to distance students. I especially like the strategies that they provide, since we so often talk to instructors at the level of the importance of feedback but often neglect to mention simple strategies for being able to provide it.

There are also some other good resources on this site that are worth perusing…

Writely

Once again, via Brian Lamb a synchronous text-editing tool that I hadn’t tried. I like Writely because:

1. The registration was simple, allowing me to get up and running in minutes, the only obstacle being that it didn’t work with my Safari browser. However, it works well in Internet Explorer, which is what the majority of our instructors and many of our students seem to be using anyways.

2. The interface is intuitive and uncluttered, which means I didn’t waste valuable time trying to figure out where to go and what to do.

3. It builds on what most users will have as prior knowledge, namely how to use Word documents, which means the learning curve is minimal.

Increasingly, course approaches (constructivist approaches) are adopting group work and collaboration on projects as assessed course activities, and students are largely stuck fumbling with sharing word documents in a discussion forum, through IM, or through email. Obviously, distance students don’t have the luxury of being able to meet face to face to work on projects together, and even if they can, sometimes it’s not always the most efficient way of getting something done.

The nice thing about synchronous text editing tools such as this one is that they don’t have to be used synchronously (but obviously can be used that way if needed). Personally, I think that the asynchronicity of online courses is what gives them the potential to be so great, especially for adult learners who don’t want to be stuck with the task of trying to fit synchronous course activities into their already busy schedules. However, some of our course instructors have noted an increased amount of requests for a chat tool option for student-student communication (but not student-instructor communication, which is interesting). But that’s a whole other discussion…

I’m thinking about introducing Writely in a couple of ways:

1. In a case study course, as a space where students would work on developing a group response to a case.

2. In courses where peer-evaluation of writing is required, allowing a peer, or group of peers to comment and assist each other’s work.

I would also recommend it to faculty who are collaborating on research articles. I’ve been using Peanut Butter Wiki for the co-authoring of an article, and while I highly recommend it as a password protected wiki, I feel restricted in the level of formatting that wikis can provide. I like the option to change font colours, easily add images, and spell check (which Writely does) without having to find out how a wiki will let me do that.

KEEP Toolkit

I always get excited when I find new tools that are simple, well designed, and FREE! Most of the time I come across these tools via Brian Lamb’s weblog in the in flux corner of the site. Stephen Downes’ site is also a good place for finding interesting educational technology related research and tools. Today’s discovery is timely, since it will address two of my immediate projects–the development of a “Digital Tools for Assessment and Feedback” workshop with TAG, and thinking about ways to showcase Faculty and TST efforts with educational technology in the Faculty of Dentistry.

I’ve just begun to delve into the KEEP Toolkit , a freely hosted and open source tool developed by the folks at Carnegie . The initial description got me curious…

“The KEEP toolkit is a set of web-based tools that help teachers, students and institutions quickly create compact and engaging knowledge representations on the Web”

but “knowledge representations” didn’t really tell me a whole lot. Neither did the description of what the KEEP toolkit can do..

With the KEEP Toolkit, you can:

Select and organize teaching and learning materials to illustrate some of the critical aspects of teaching and student learning.

Prompt analysis and reflection by using templates that provide conceptual frameworks, categories, and guiding prompts/questions.

Transform materials and reflections into visually appealing and intellectually engaging representations that can be easily shared online or in print.

Share ideas for peer-review, assessment, collective knowledge building, and others purposes to advance teaching and learning as a community of practice and reflection.

Simplify the technical tasks and facilitate the evolving intellectual processes involved in knowledge building and sharing.

…although I did start getting the idea that it might be useful as a portfolio tool.

I really began to like this tool once I started looking at the templates and the cases, which show how the tool has been used to showcase a redesign of a course or a group of courses, or to showcase a research project. It’s also pretty easy to see how this tool could be used for students to present their work, either as a collection ( a portfolio) or as an individual piece.