Of Course!

_When David Kanter went off to college at the University of Pennsylvania, he expected his professors would give him "extensive feedback" on each assignment. Many students, he surmised, are "interested in intellectual growth," and "only constructive feedback can foster such growth." Kanter, a freshman from East Falmouth, Massachusetts, reported that instead he got a "few perfunctory, illegible comments. . . scribbled in the margins." Writing in the student newspaper , The Daily Pennsylvanian, he concluded "that unmarked papers and vague comments were the norm" for students at this Ivy League school.

In a recent informal survey of Montclair students, we found similar sentiments: a strong desire for feedback on their work. But they didn't just want feedback along with their grade. They wanted something their professors regularly enjoy on their own scholarship, a chance to receive feedback and to resubmit their work before any final judgment is made about its worth. When Richard Light surveyed students at Harvard nearly two decades ago, he also found the same views. Light was trying to identify the qualities of those courses at Harvard that students found most intellectually satisfying. After interviewing thousands of current and former students in the late 1980's, he concluded that such courses had two major qualities: high but meaningful standards, and "lots of opportunity to try, fail, receive feedback, and try again" before any grade was put on the work.

Instinctively, professors have always known that students would learn best and most deeply if they had that kind of opportunity for revision, but practical considerations have frequently prevented it from happening. David Kanter concluded that the lack of feedback he was getting might be "inevitable given that a single course can have over 100 students who are each turning in a 10- to 15-page paper." While classes at Montclair are generally smaller than the one's Kanter encountered, most professors here teach more classes than do the faculty members at Penn. "How can I even think about assigning major papers in a class," one Montclair faculty member asked in frustration, "let alone give students feedback on their work before it counts for a grade."

To do so, a growing number of Montclair faculty members are using rubrics to provide feedback to their students. If the number of new books on rubrics is any indication, so are other professors across the country. One of the most popular such books is Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback and Promote Student Learning , by Dannell Stevens and Antonia Levi. The Research Academy has a copy of that book in its library.

At Penn, Kramer also found a few instructors who use a "nifty technological tool" called Waypoint Outcomes to employ rubrics. Let's say you want to make the same comment to twelve students. With Waypoint, you simply type it in once, and then each time after that requires only a checked box. Furthermore, the comment can be kept and offered to other students the next semester. The brainchild of Andrew McCann, an engineer and writing instructor at Drexel, Waypoint allows professors to offer better comments in far less time.

While Waypoint helps speed up the process, it alone can't guarantee good comments. There is also a growing body of research literature on what kinds of comments will work best in helping and stimulating students to make those revisions. When Joshua Aronson spoke on our campus in March as part of the Provost's Series on University Teaching and Learning, he noted some of that research. As Aronson mentioned, some of it challenges some widely held notions about how to provide good feedback to students. It also points to a somewhat maddening conclusion: social forces can help shape what kinds of feedback will work best, but since different groups of students face different social winds, the same kind of feedback might have completely opposite influences on any two students. In one case, it might encourage students to do revisions; in another, the same comments could demoralize a student, producing apathy and defeat.

Maddening, yes, but with dedication and study we can learn more about our students and about what kinds of feedback and comments will work best. As Kanter wrote in his op-ed piece, "students don't get insightful feedback simply because [the professor] uses a fancy computer program. They get it instead because of the dedication of their professor."

If you want more information on rubrics and the scholarship on providing feedback, contact the Research Academy. Among other items, we have a video recording of Aronson's talk. The Research Academy is currently exploring the possibility of bringing Waypoint Outcomes to Montclair State. If you have any interest in or experience with this tool, please contact us. Furthermore, please contact us if you have done research on feedback to students.