Strategies for Providing Online Feeback

Small Teaching

Flower Darby's book, Small Teaching Online, is modeled on James Lang's 2016 book, Small Teaching. Both texts focus on a simple principle: making small, meaningful changes leads to student success: 

"Paying attention to the small, everyday decisions we make in teaching represents our best route to successful learning for our students, in almost any learning environment we can imagine" (xxii). 

The concept is one well established in many fields, like sports. It's really difficult to change everything about a player's habits all at once; focusing on one small, fundamental skill at a time is much more effective. Similarly, no faculty should feel pressure to revise everything about a course or curriculum all at the same time. It simply doesn't work. People feel overwhelmed and never get started, or they find it so time-consuming and intimidating that the changes are ineffective. 

Both books focus on making small, incremental revisions based on the best research about teaching and learning available. 

Book cover for Small Teaching Online by Flower Darby and James Lang

Resources

For more information about the book, you can listen to an interview with the author Links to an external site. (voice only) with Flower Darby.

Or, read this Inside Higher Ed article Links to an external site. about the book. 

 

Strategies

If you believe that feedback allows students to improve, you know the importance of giving that feedback in a timely and effective manner. 

Face-to-face classes often have built-in opportunities for students to remind faculty about getting assignments back. My composition students would usually ask, "When will you return our papers?" every day after turning them in. "Are you done yet?" would be one of the first questions that I received at the start of class (and, often, at the end of class for the late arrivals). But, online classes don't have the same opportunities to ask about assignment feedback, so you will need to be more proactive about communicating your feedback timeline, progress, and delays. 

Flower Darby shares five specific strategies for providing quality online feedback, based on two guiding principles: timeliness and effectiveness. These two principles underpin all the approaches listed below. 

Briefly, here's the list:

  1. Set deadlines strategically
  2. Have real-time, just-in-time, conversations
  3. Get creative with virtual office hours
  4. Use tech to streamline grading
  5. Give meaningful comments via Media Tools

For more information on the strategies, please watch this video.

 

 

 

For more information about providing quality feedback, see: 

Books and Articles

Small Teaching Online, by Flower Darby (2018) - available for checking in the TLC 

“Live Synchronous Web Meetings in Asynchronous Online Courses: Reconceptualizing Virtual Office Hours Links to an external site.” by Lowenthal, Dunlap, and Snelson, Online Learning (2017)

Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedabck, and Promote Student Learning, by Danenelle D. Stevens, Antonio J. Levi, et al (2013) - available for checking in the TLC

"How to Give Your Students Better Feedback with Technology: Advice Guide Links to an external site." by Holly Fiock and Heather Garcia , The Chronicle of Higher Education (2019) 

"How to Provide Meaningful Feedback Online Links to an external site." by Amy Rottmann and Salina Rabidoux, Inside Higher Ed (2017). 

 

Additional Canvas Support

eLearning Faculty Development modules

TLC Module on Rubrics